Nonhuman Forms of Thought
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Program in Medieval Studies, Rutgers Univ.
Organizer Name
Danielle Allor
Organizer Affiliation
Rutgers Univ.
Presider Name
Jennifer Garrison
Presider Affiliation
St. Mary's Univ.
Paper Title 1
City as Zoophyte: Arboreal Articulations of Urban Community in Early English Drama
Presenter 1 Name
Robert W. Barrett Jr.
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Univ. of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign
Paper Title 2
Thinking Like a Cross: Speaking Crosses as Non-Human Models of Faith in Medieval English Literature
Presenter 2 Name
Liberty S. Stanavage
Presenter 2 Affiliation
SUNY-Potsdam
Paper Title 3
Vegetal Origins in Late Medieval Poetic Thought
Presenter 3 Name
Danielle Allor
Start Date
12-5-2018 10:00 AM
Session Location
Schneider 1325
Description
In one sense, thought in the medieval period is defined in specifically human terms: rationality is the defining characteristic of humanity. In another, more expansive, sense, medieval thought reaches outside the human to draw many of its organizing principles from plants, animals, and artifacts. Trees of virtues and vices encourage the pursuit of virtue and the avoidance of sin; astrolabes and volvelles calculate the position of the heavens; and buildings, castles, and arks form the basis for practicing the art of memory. As scholars such as Mary Carruthers have argued, medieval thought takes place alongside a dizzying array of nonhuman images and objects: books, trees, pearls, rivers, arks, buildings, and wheels. While some of these images are pressed into service for their spectacular value, others provide a structural logic. Trees and rivers allow medieval thinkers to understand relationships between trunk and branch, wellspring and tributary. Architectural images, such as castles and arks, provide compartments and divisions to guide and sustain memory and thought. Recently, new materialism has reconsidered the dualistic relationship between matter and thought to allow for the possibility of thought not just beyond the human, but beyond the living. This panel focuses on the contributions that medieval studies can make to one aspect of this rethinking: the interrelations, confusions, and unexpected meanings that arise when thought is carried out through forms and structures drawn from the nonhuman world. Is the relationship between human thought and these nonhuman forms antagonistic, symbiotic, prosthetic, instrumental? How are forms of thought abstracted from nonhuman beings and objects? How do the nonhuman aspects of medieval thought complicate our understanding of thought’s role in constituting the human? This session will bring together papers that address the nonhuman aspects of medieval thought in literature, theology, history, science, and philosophy.
Danielle Allor
Nonhuman Forms of Thought
Schneider 1325
In one sense, thought in the medieval period is defined in specifically human terms: rationality is the defining characteristic of humanity. In another, more expansive, sense, medieval thought reaches outside the human to draw many of its organizing principles from plants, animals, and artifacts. Trees of virtues and vices encourage the pursuit of virtue and the avoidance of sin; astrolabes and volvelles calculate the position of the heavens; and buildings, castles, and arks form the basis for practicing the art of memory. As scholars such as Mary Carruthers have argued, medieval thought takes place alongside a dizzying array of nonhuman images and objects: books, trees, pearls, rivers, arks, buildings, and wheels. While some of these images are pressed into service for their spectacular value, others provide a structural logic. Trees and rivers allow medieval thinkers to understand relationships between trunk and branch, wellspring and tributary. Architectural images, such as castles and arks, provide compartments and divisions to guide and sustain memory and thought. Recently, new materialism has reconsidered the dualistic relationship between matter and thought to allow for the possibility of thought not just beyond the human, but beyond the living. This panel focuses on the contributions that medieval studies can make to one aspect of this rethinking: the interrelations, confusions, and unexpected meanings that arise when thought is carried out through forms and structures drawn from the nonhuman world. Is the relationship between human thought and these nonhuman forms antagonistic, symbiotic, prosthetic, instrumental? How are forms of thought abstracted from nonhuman beings and objects? How do the nonhuman aspects of medieval thought complicate our understanding of thought’s role in constituting the human? This session will bring together papers that address the nonhuman aspects of medieval thought in literature, theology, history, science, and philosophy.
Danielle Allor