Thoreau's Nature: Ethics, Politics, and the Wild explores how Thoreau crafted a life open to 'the Wild,' a term that marks the startling element of foreignness in every object of experience, however familiar. Thoreau's encounters with nature, Bennett argues, allowed him to resist his all-too-human tendency toward intellectual laziness, social conformity, and political complacency. Bennett pursues this theme by constructing a series of dialogues between Thoreau and our contemporaries: Foucault on identity and power, Haraway on the nature/culture of division, Hollywood celebrities on the Walden Woods Project, the National Endowment for the Humanities on politics and art, and Kafka on the question of political idealism.

Chapter 1 Why Thoreau Hates Politics Chapter 2 Techniques of the Self Chapter 3 Writing a Heteroverse Chapter 4 Art and Politics Chapter 5 Fronting Thoreau

Jane Bennett is a political theorist at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of The Enchantment of Modern Life and a coordinating editor of Theory & Event.