E-Co-Affectivity: Exploring Pathos at Life’s Material Interfaces

In her absorbing book E-Co-Affectivity, philosopher Marjolein Oele explores how humans, plants, animals and the soil can relate as a coaffective community. For anyone interested in seeing how interdisciplinary studies can be applied, I highly recommend this philosophically creative and intellectually challenging book, which could be valuable not only for philosophers but also for environmentalists and those across animal studies fields. Oele touches on biological, medical and evolutionary elements throughout her prolonged philosophical analysis. The writing is clear and poetic, so along with the thoughtful meditations it’s the kind of book that sharpens, as it has for me, a mental and visceral awakening to the material world. My review can give only a glimpse of the academic sophistication of this book, and I hope not to oversimplify some of the philosophically layered textures. The material factors of life, organic and inorganic, are “always emerging” (p. 2) in an ontogenesis...