'An old teapot, used daily, can tell me more of my past than anything I recorded of it.' Sylvia Townsend Warner
There are many ways of telling the story of a life and how we've got to where we are. The questions of why and how we think the way we do continues to preoccupy philosophers. In The Stuff of Life, Timothy Morton chooses the objects that have shaped and punctuated their life to tell the story of who they are and why they might think the way they do. These objects are 'things' in the richest sense. They are beings, non-human beings, that have a presence and a force of their own. From the looming expanse of Battersea Power Station to a packet of anti-depressants and a cowboy suit, Morton explores why 'stuff' matters and the life of these things have so powerfully impinged upon their own. Their realization, through a concealer stick, that they identify as non-binary reveals the strange and wonderful ways that objects can form our worlds.
Part memoir, part philosophical exploration of the meaning of a life lived alongside and through other things, Morton asks us to think about the stuff, things, objects and buildings that have formed our realities and who we are and might be.

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University, USA. They are the author of 16 books, including Being Ecological (2018) and Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (2017), and 200 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food. www.ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com @the_eco_thought

Chapter 0: Introducing
Chapter 1: Electric Peanuts
Chapter 2: Inner Bodyworker
Chapter 3: Wimbledon Park Station
Chapter 4: Oso
Chapter 5: Arc Lights
Chapter 6: CPAP
Chapter 7: Antidepressants
Chapter 8: Cowboy Costume
Chapter 9: Concealer
Chapter 10: Battersea Power Station
Chapter 11: Clangers
Chapter 12: Drum Kit
Chapter 13: Avebury Ring
Chapter 14: The Chicken
Acknowledgments