Stone. The Ecology of the Non-Human

The ancient Greek myth narrates how King Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to push a heavy boulder up a mountain, but his efforts were in vain: no sooner had the stone reached the top than it rolled back down. In the numerous interpretations of the myth, we overlook one thing: no one speaks of the falling boulder. Meanwhile, the stone clearly possesses its own agency and fights for the status of the main character: the non-human against the human. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, director of the Medieval Studies Institute at George Washington University, suggests viewing the stone not as a prop but as the protagonist of the story and narratives. Armed with a posthumanist research perspective, in an effort to understand the world from the viewpoint of non-human actors, Cohen finds an unexpected ally: medieval literature. Narratives about animated gemstones, opening doors in burial mounds, half-legendary knights and kings put a spanner in the works of anthropomorphism; they are full of vitality and metaphysics that challenge the desire to strip the world of its enchantment, reduce matter to raw material, and diminish it through the lens of utility. Foreword by Maximilian of Naples.