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6%OFFJeffrey Jerome Cohen - Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman - 9780816692620 - V9780816692620
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Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman

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Description for Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman Paperback. Num Pages: 376 pages, 13. BIC Classification: HBG; RBG. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 217 x 140 x 24. Weight in Grams: 442.

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 ... Read more

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.”

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Product Details

Publisher
University of Minnesota Press
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2015
Condition
New
Weight
441g
Number of Pages
376
Place of Publication
Minnesota, United States
ISBN
9780816692620
SKU
V9780816692620
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-50

About Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen is professor of English and director of the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute at George Washington University. He is the author of Medieval Identity Machines and Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages, and the editor of Monster Theory: Reading Culture, Prismatic Ecology, and Elemental Ecocritism: Thinking with Earth, Air, Fire, and Water (all from ... Read more

Reviews for Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman
"A poignant and poetic book, Stone is a provocative contribution to anthropocene studies. Rather than naming humans as agents endowed with geologic force, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen contemplates our anxious collaboration with lithic matter that outlasts and eludes us. Stone is a must-read for anyone interested in rethinking the anthropocene within the geologic turn in literary and cultural studies." —Stephanie ... Read more

Goodreads reviews for Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman


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