Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman

by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

Stone maps the force, vivacity, and stories within our most mundane matter, stone. For too long stone has served as an unexamined metaphor for the “really real”: blunt factuality, nature’s curt rebuke. Yet, medieval writers knew that stones drop with fire from the sky, emerge through the subterranean lovemaking of the elements, tumble along riverbeds from Eden, partner with the masons who build worlds with them. Such motion suggests an ecological enmeshment and an almost creaturely mineral life. Although geological time can leave us reeling, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues that stone’s endurance is also an invitation to apprehend the world in other than human terms. Never truly inert, stone poses a profound challenge to modernity’s disenchantments. Its agency undermines the human desire to be separate from the environment, a bifurcation that renders nature “out there,” a mere resource for recreation, consumption, and exploitation. Written with great verve and elegance, this pioneering work is notable not only for interweaving the medieval and the modern but also as a major contribution to ecotheory. Comprising chapters organized by concept —“Geophilia,” “Time,” “Force,” and “Soul”—Cohen seamlessly brings together a wide range of topics including stone’s potential to transport humans into nonanthropocentric scales of place and time, the “petrification” of certain cultures, the messages fossils bear, the architecture of Bordeaux and Montparnasse, Yucca Mountain and nuclear waste disposal, the ability of stone to communicate across millennia in structures like Stonehenge, and debates over whether stones reproduce and have souls. Showing that what is often assumed to be the most lifeless of substances is, in its own time, restless and forever in motion, Stone fittingly concludes by taking us to Iceland⎯a land that, writes the author, “reminds us that stone like water is alive, that stone like water is transient.”

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Nature, Theory, Environment, Science, Ecology

376 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2015

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Stone: an ecology of the inhuman" examines the relationship of humans to stone for the purpose of encouraging a perspective that is not human centered. It points out, for instance, that viewed from the perspective of the short lifespan of a human being, stone is inert, stationary, unchanging, but from the perspective of geologic time it is none of those things. It uses the examples of monuments such as Stonehenge to suggest that stone can be seen as collaborating with humans to carry messages into the future for us, but also as performing their own kind of slow dance that one needs a sense of geologic time to appreciate. And it uses medieval lapidaries, or studies of the different kinds of stone and their properties, to show that although phrases like "Dead as a stone" were already in use, people in medieval times had a sense of stone as being much more lively, if not actually alive, than we do today.

This book is fascinating and fun to read, but dense. I could usually only read a few pages at a time. It is full of metaphoric, allusive and even playful language. Several times I laughed at what seemed to be puns that were meant seriously.
I recommend this for an intellectual workout.

[James C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never a read a book like this about stone. The prose is deep and speaks to many experiences I have had with this material that makes up our planet. Exquisitely informed and well written, a bit hard to take in large doses but an effective journey into the world of geology.

[Sarah Sherratt · Rating 5 out of 5]

magical!!!

[Teodor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meditative and generous. My copy is very well dog eared; will be returning to it.

[Miles Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cohen's theory is always just so wonderfully weird

[Dee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had only meant to glimpse briefly into this book and maybe read the introduction, but the proliferative allure of Cohen's writing kept me engaged to the very end. An Ecology of the Inhuman is a beautiful posthumanist pondering of the lithic that is also a piece of medievalist literary scholarship, showing how Middle-Age texts, in all their weird zaniness, had already figured Bennett's vibrant matter and deep ecological thinking. Cohen's book is impossible to outline from memory: he cascades in and out of grand ontological ruminations to pondering the genesis and endurance of Stonehenge (actually, Stonehenge keeps weaving in and out of the text, looping around and around, remaining permanent) to exploring medieval associations of stone-heartedness and Jewishness (there's a really touching excursion in which he talks about the attempt to familiarize his children with the Holocaust) to medieval lapidaries, to the completely bonkers worlds of John Mandeville, and to all the rocks that bounce around in the Arthurian legends. Hypnotic, bountiful, poetic. Glad I stumbled over this!

[Jade Vella · Rating 3 out of 5]

very in depth and interesting

[Mills College Library]

113 C6784 2015

[Conrad Leibel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen has a wonderful writing style that blends creative expression, literary analysis, historiography and environmental science. I love this book. a thoughtful consideration of stones and "stoniness" - the book is a great pleasure to read.