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  • Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
  • T. J. Martinson (bio)
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. 376 pp. $91.00 cloth.

In centuries past, our medieval ancestors recognized stones as much more than mere units of inert substrate. Stones were conduits of mystery, of possibility—a dragon’s egg, a giant’s bone, or even a medicinal agent. Stones were agential enigmas whose existences and essences interpolated with the human world in phantasmal ways, and, as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues, they continue to do so today. The commingling of stone’s lithic force with the human world is the central narrative of Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman, an exploration of medieval texts that seeks refined understandings of stones as active entities that “possesses creative forces and intense dynamism” (p. 42). At a time when literary studies seeks applications for the burgeoning new materialisms, Cohen interjects and points backward hundreds of centuries to medieval thinkers and texts whose preoccupation with the material world parallels our supposedly “new” materialisms.

However, regardless of material fascination, the Middle Ages were hardly an episteme known for challenging prevalent anthropocentric ideologies. Thus, an interesting tension arises early in the book and is sustained throughout: How exactly can we discern ecological perspectives from the strikingly anthropocentric texts of the Middle Ages? It is a question Cohen considers: “Although inherently anthropocentric, such narratives unleash ecologies-in-motion that subtly challenge that perspective that offers alternative visions in which a gem of cold gleam touched by water explodes in sudden storm, or a rock that calls out to be held burns the hand that grasps its heft” (p. 10). Importantly, Cohen does not seek to resolve this lingering tension between the texts and his critical approach; instead, he balances the two, focusing his attention on the uncanny ability of stone to assert its agency even within the confines of an anthropocentric literary tradition. [End Page 561]

Cohen warns early in his exploration that his method of writing Ecology of the Inhuman intermixes “the medieval and the modern, the theoretical with the blunt, the linguistic and textual with the ecomaterial. Vertigo is the book’s intent rather than an accident of its rhetorical excess” (p. 16). His critical approach is variegated, drawing from a wide array of theories, most notably posthumanism, environmental studies, and the new materialisms. Of the new materialisms, Cohen seems particularly drawn to the vibrant materialism of Jane Bennett and the speculative realism of Graham Harman and Levi Bryant in that he urges an understanding of stone beyond “the totality of its relations” (p. 134). Although the colorful theoretical base in application to predominantly medieval texts can be dizzying at times, the resulting “vertigo” is far from arbitrary. The nuanced treatment and representation of stones in the texts rightly deserves a similarly nuanced theoretical approach.

In his first chapter, “Geophilia,” Cohen explores the similarities between medieval Christian theology and contemporary speculative realism in that both discern “inviolable mystery in the nonhuman world” (p. 43). He moves deftly from the role of stones in the Franklin’s Tale of Canterbury Tales to the power of Stonehenge in order to establish stone’s “promiscuous desire to affiliate with other forms of matter, regardless of organic composition or resemblance to human vitality” (p. 27). Chapter 2, “Time,” explicates the relationship between stone’s disruption of anthropocentric temporal scales and the recurrence of catastrophe narratives, particularly within medieval writings on Genesis. Chapter 3, “Force,” looks to the Book of John Mandeville and various King Arthur tales to argue for an invigorated understanding of stone that recognizes both its “lapidary stillness and seismic motion” (p. 160). The final chapter, “Soul,” puts Albertus Magnus in conversation with Aristotle to suggest that stone’s agency complicates anthropocentric distinctions between life and matter; in Cohen’s words, “Coextensive with humans in their materiality but possessed of an ontology all their own, stones forge relations, manifesting a queer kind of life” (p. 222).

Although the wide array of medieval texts and authors at Cohen’s employ may be unfamiliar to a reader, Cohen proves to be a generous guide and...

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