August 8, 2023 • 49 mins
In Noah’s Arkive, Jeffrey J. Cohen and Julian Yates examine the long history of imagining endurance against climate change catastrophe—as well as alternative ways of creating refuge. Arguing that the biblical ark may well be the worst possible exemplar of human behavior, this book uncovers the startling afterlife of the Genesis narrative and surveys the long history of dwelling with the consequences of choosing only a few to survive in order to start the world over. Here, Cohen and Yates are interviewed by Steven Swarbrick.
Jeffrey J. Cohen is Dean of Humanities at Arizona State University. He is author or editor of several books, including Noah’s Arkive, Stone, Veer Ecology, and Elemental Ecocriticism.
Julian Yates is H. Fletcher Brown Professor of English and Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. He is author or editor of several books, including Noah’s Arkive; Of Sheep, Oranges, and Yeast; and Error, Misuse, Failure.
Steven Swarbrick is assistant professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York. He is author of The Environmental Unconscious.
Episode references:
Bible (Genesis)
Athanasius Kircher (Arca Noe)
N. K. Jemisin (Emergency Skin)
Jeanette Winterson (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)
Rebecca Solnit (A Paradise Built in Hell, “disaster utopias”)
Donna Haraway (A Cyborg Manifesto, The Companion Species Manifesto)
Anna Tsing
Silo (Apple TV+ show) (with speculation spoiler alert)
William de Brailes (The Flood of Noah) (image appearing in color in the book)
Arks visited in this book include:
Ark Encounter, Williamstown, Kentucky
Biosphere 2, Pinal County, Arizona
The Ark of Safety, Frostburg, Maryland
Keywords: environmental humanities, climate change, Genesis, catastrophe, disaster utopias, artificial intelligence, ark thinking, medieval studies, monsters, giants, groundless reading, tension, contradiction, hope
“The worst thing you can do, we have learned, is to imagine that you are no longer on an ark.” (from Noah’s Arkive, page 3)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (00:02):
Genesis is a story that wants to be misread.
Everything we know about thestory is not there.
Julian Yates (00:09):
The worst thing you can do is think that you're
not or no longer on an ark thatyou got off.
Steven Swarbrick (00:18):
Hello, and welcome to the University of
Minnesota Press podcast. My nameis Steven Swarbrick. I am the
author of The EnvironmentalUnconscious, Ecological Poetics
from Spencer to Milton,published by the University of
Minnesota Press this year. AndI'm joined by Jeffrey Cohen and
Julian Yates, coauthors of theoutstanding new book, Noah's
Archive, also published by theUniversity of Minnesota Press.
(00:42):
Jeffrey and Julian, it's so goodto be in conversation with you.
Would you please start us off byintroducing yourselves to our
listeners?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (00:48):
I'm Jeffrey Cohen. I'm the dean of
humanities at Arizona StateUniversity, and really happy to
be here today. Thanks, Steven.
Julian Yates (00:55):
Hi, Steven. Hi, Jeffrey. I'm Julian Yates. I
teach in the English departmentand in the Material Cultural
Studies at University ofDelaware, and it's a delight to
be here. Thank you fororganizing this, Steven.
Steven Swarbrick (01:07):
Thank you both. I'd like to begin by just
saying how much I enjoyedreading Noah's Arkiv. For
listeners who are hearing aboutit for the first time, it's a
book that engages with so much,both old and new, including big
umbrella fields like the bluehumanities, eco criticism,
critical race, immigration, andclimate change studies. It's
also, I I believe, a aremarkable demonstration of the
(01:28):
power of close reading. So thethe focus of the book is the
Genesis story of Noah and theark.
And throughout the book, you payfine grained attention to a
story that I think many readersfind spare, at times cryptic.
And in the process, you make anotherwise familiar story strange
and new and urgent for ourtimes. So it's a terrific book.
(01:48):
I'm excited to dive in. Whydon't we start with what brought
you together to work Arno'sarchive?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (01:55):
Julian, I wonder if we have two different
versions of the story.
Julian Yates (01:59):
We probably have three or four. Why don't you
start, and then I will give myversion, and it will be
identical to yours. It's reallyjust because, of course, you
know, you you can't write a aNoah's Ark book without two
authors.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (02:12):
So in my version of the story, it begins
in friendship. I had started asmaller Noah's Ark project a
little bit before Julian and Istarted to talk about some of
the themes of the book. And themore Julian and I spoke, we do
have a deep friendship and havebeen presenting projects
together for a long time. Themore obvious it was to me that
(02:32):
we needed to write this booktogether. And I think the moment
of crystallization, strangelyenough, was in a whiskey bar in
Kalamazoo, Michigan, where wedecided that as tired as we
were, we were going to hash outthe entire book on a piece of
paper and then take a picture ofit and send it to Doug Armato
and ask if Minnesota wasinterested in it.
(02:55):
We drank a lot of whiskey. Wedid a lot of thinking. We had a
lot of fun plotting it out, andthen the book set sail from
there. That that's my version.
Julian Yates (03:04):
I mean, I think in fairness to Jeffrey, he had been
interested in giants once upon atime, which probably
necessitated having to thinkabout the, the Genesis narrative
and and Noah's archive andNoah's Ark, the story of that.
For me, it had been a sort offixture of childhood in a very
sort of remote story you know,but you don't actually ever read
(03:26):
it or let alone close read it.But, Jeffrey, remember, we had a
prebook that we didn't write,which this book became a much
more grounded version of, whichwas about escaping the gravity
of planet Earth and, I think itwas called Adventures in
Groundless Reading or somethinglike that. The more we actually
started to try and think aboutwhat it would mean to do that,
(03:48):
the more we both sort ofconnected with this figure of
the ark as Earth, as spaceship,as all these different kinds of
vessels.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (03:57):
That's right. In fact, adventures in
groundless reading was theoriginal subtitle of the book.
And then as the book gainedvelocity and started to plot its
own trajectory, we abandonedthat one. We abandoned the next
one, which was, towards anecology of refuge. It just felt
like Noah's archive says it all,so that's what it became.
Steven Swarbrick (04:19):
Well, in part of the the archive you're
exploring, it's, of course,biblical. You also range across
a number of contemporary mediaexamples. I was fascinated by
the composition of the book. Asone would expect, anyone who's
familiar with your work, itblends literary and
philosophical analysis, but italso incorporates firsthand
experience of traveling to arcsites and your own sort of
(04:43):
narratives of of encounteringpeople who are trying to
reimagine the arc story andbring it to life today. For many
of us who work in earlierperiods, whether it's early
modern or medieval, we rarelyget to see our primary texts
come alive in front of our eyes.
So I'm curious, was it alwayspart of your plan to unfold
first person narrative into thework, or did that just emerge as
(05:05):
you were writing? And how didyour encounters inform your
thinking?
Julian Yates (05:11):
Couple of responses to that. One is that I
think we're both really veryaware the period at about fifty
year intervals, people writeNoah's Ark books, big academic
Noah's Ark books dating backreally as far as you'd like to
go. I mean, AthanasiusKircher's, monumental sort of
seventeenth century art bookcomes to mind, but there are so
(05:33):
many others. And the storyalways gets essentially retold,
maximized beyond its biblicalsort of skeletal form. And so we
were very conscious that there'sa tradition, a genre, a sort of
mini genre or minor genre of artbooks out there.
So we're very conscious thatthey would shift by discipline
(05:55):
and that the arc story would bedeployed for a variety of
different reasons, whether it'sbecause of the discovery of a
fossil record, right, in the theearly modern period and having
to deal with that or whetherit's to do with, in our
historical moment, theecological devastation of
climate change. At the sametime, we're both, I think,
(06:16):
committed to the idea that,thinking, theory making happens
in a variety of differentdiscourses. I'm gonna sound
facetious, but I'm not, thatmuch of what we call literature
and culture works out as sort ofGenesis fan fiction. But,
Jeffrey, you wanna talk aboutwhy we why why don't you just
talk about whatever you wannatalk about, but you could talk
(06:37):
about why we went to ARCS? Wewere worried we were Noah.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (06:41):
Well, I mean, it it was also impossible not to
go to visit ARCS. It was not anoption not to make these visits.
So we thought if we're gonnalook at the long history of
imagining Noah's Ark andrealizing it in literature, in
art, we needed to go to someongoing art projects. COVID
threw a monkey wrench into it.We didn't get to visit as many
(07:02):
as we wanted to, but we didreally enjoy the ones that we
went to, and it was formative.
So I said the project began infriendship. It was sustained by
friendship, and Julian and Itravel well together. We both
have similar obsessions andsimilar strange ideas of fun. So
visiting these places where wewould take a lot of notes and
(07:24):
then sitting in a often in acoffee shop and writing
frantically together into aGoogle Doc and then maybe even
staying up until late at nighthaving moved from a coffee shop
to a bar. We'd get a lot ofstuff done and a lot of thinking
done together, and that kind of,like, mutuality of processing
really served us well.
(07:44):
Having said that, not everyvisit was as enjoyable as we
thought it would be. So visitingthe ARC encounter in Kentucky
was soul crushing. It was not apleasant experience. It actually
made us feel bad that we spentmoney on it. It's such a
homophobic space.
There there's lots that we couldhave written against it, but we
(08:06):
always found ways through it inorder to find something
affirmative. So we followed upthat visit with a visit to the
local library as a kind ofantidote to the fascistic
structure of that reallyfundamentalist arc. Every
encounter was valuable foradvancing the project. Every
encounter helped us to see boththe possibilities and the limits
(08:27):
of what it is to build an arc inplace. And every encounter
helped us to think throughexactly what our project was
about.
Steven Swarbrick (08:35):
Jeffrey, following up on that last
comment, the encounters that youhad and some of the challenges
that you both faced, did theseexperiences shed light on the
story itself? I found these,narratives so fascinating and
and useful because it created aresonant loop between the
analysis that you're doing ofthe story, what you were finding
(08:56):
in the kind of contemporary arcbuilding that you're seeing
unfold, and also some of the,again, the challenges, the
resistances that are built intothose structures and in those
places.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (09:08):
I would actually say what the
ethnographic adventures that wehad, what they enabled was the
writing of the book itself. Andin the original
conceptualization of the book,every chapter would have a kind
of interspace where there'd bean ethnographic encounter with
one of the arks. Eventually, wedecided that it would just be
(09:28):
the first chapter, had a bitabout the first ark that we went
to visit. It would relate someof the writing and thinking that
we'd done elsewhere. But,actually, most of the thinking
that we did as as site visitsgot incorporated into the
structure of the book.
So it didn't seem necessary toput those narrations into the
book itself. We do havefootnotes that show you exactly
where to find what we wrote onthose things, but they didn't
(09:51):
seem quite as important to thebook. The book already contained
them. It was the first encounterthat seemed the most important
to us, not only because it was avisit to an arc that will never
be completed, and it was a visitthat opened up possibilities to
us that we didn't expect at all.It was also the fact that we
realized in retrospect that wewent to Frostburg, Maryland to
(10:14):
see the Arc of Safety, and wewere ill equipped to ask the
questions that were at the heartof the book.
And it was the lingeringquestions that we did not ask
that helps us to frame the restof the book. So by the time we
got to our encounter inKentucky, we were ready for
opening things up, got thingsshut down there. But, again, it
(10:34):
became really important todeciding what the stakes were of
imagining the kinds of refuge abook like this could give.
Julian Yates (10:43):
I think that what I'd say is that part of the
commitment of going to theauction process largely. Right?
I mean, Jeffrey, I mean, that'sreally part of the commitment to
it is that I mean, we felt thatwe were writing a book, which
was also, to a certain extent,building a kind of arc or
archive of this story. We werecommitted to the idea that the
story is really ongoing. It'sstill working itself out.
(11:04):
When you ask, Steven, did thevisits shed light on previous
arc iterations or even theGenesis story itself, I think it
did in the sense that we were sotuned into the way in which
these arcs in process wereattempts to begin something, to
actually set something inmotion, and sometimes they
stalled and got stuck, like inthe Frostburg example, the first
(11:26):
one we went to. To a certainextent, I felt like we were ill
equipped every time weencountered one of these arks
and and were constantly learningby being there. We were beguiled
to a certain extent on ourinitial arrival in the Kentucky
Arc because it was so not whatwe had expected. And as someone
who's most sort of distantreader of ethnographic theory, I
(11:47):
mean, that was a crash course inthe sort of what it means to
encounter the metaphysicsworldview of of other ways of
thinking and being, and we triedto be polite largely. I mean,
that was our attempt to sort ofresist the urge to close read at
that point and to be open towhat we were encounter until we
were shut out or invited in.
(12:07):
And that was a early constantphenomenon that really, I think,
gave us energy while writing.And the other thing that I just
want to sort of I mean, thatJeffrey, that you mentioned was
just that urgency of livewriting because we both sort of
collaborated with other peopleand this gave us a way to stay
in contact. I It was obviouslycut short by the pandemic, but
then then we moved to Zoom.
Steven Swarbrick (12:28):
It's like opening possibilities and
closing off other ones. It's arecurring thread throughout the
book. One of the things that youhighlight at the beginning of
the book, and and this isemphasized up to the very end,
the arc story is a story abouthuman and nonhuman endurance in
unlivable times. At the sametime, one of the things you
(12:48):
highlight so well in this bookis that this particular arc
story has itself endured. It'snot the only flood narrative.
It's not even the first. WhenI'm teaching the Genesis story,
I teach it alongside the epic ofGilgamesh, and my students are
always really amazed to see thethe connections between them.
I'm curious, having written thisbook, why do you think that this
particular flood narrative orthis particular arc story has
(13:11):
endured the way that it has?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (13:13):
Because we live in catastrophe. There's
something about the way Genesisnarrates a very human experience
of anthropogenic climate change.Right? God sends this flood
because of human action, so itis human caused. And there's
something about that enduranceof family and attempts to save
(13:35):
things that even as it goesbadly wrong, it's such a good
story to think with.
One of the things that Julie andI found continually fascinating
is the ways in which Genesis, inits narration of the flood, is a
story that wants to be misread,that wants to open up
possibility. And whenever you goback to it, you keep realizing
(13:56):
everything we know about thestory is not there. And yet
there's something about thestructuration of the story that
wants you to put in the what isnot there. And its long history
over time is about populating itwith possibility. So we have so
many contradictory stories ofthe flood.
Some of them are really usefulfor the times we live in right
now. Some of them are reallydangerous in the ways that they
(14:20):
seem to value gated communitiesand closing things down and
small survival. So we wanted tothink through what are the
actual affirmative possibilitiesfor refuge that are in the
story, and then what kinds oflimited readings endure to this
day, and give us a cognitiveframe for dealing with
catastrophe that is actually notvery useful, And in fact, maybe
(14:42):
doing us great harm.
Julian Yates (14:44):
Yeah. Absolutely. And the other thing that comes
through is the way in which thestory, if you reduce it to its
governing tropes or images ofjust what comes to mind if you
close your eyes and you say thestory and you think of the story
I mean, the figure of the ark,happy animals and humans,
landfall, rainbow. The pull ofthe story is when reduced to
(15:05):
those elements is really turningdisaster into catastrophe, into
something that's passed. Andthat that that's really part of
the narrative pool that makes itsuch a powerful story, not about
disaster, but about a foundationabout producing something new as
long as you don't dwell too longon what happens next.
Right? I mean, it's a way ofsort of clawing your way into
(15:27):
the future in a way withoutreally actually having to
imagine it.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (15:31):
Because Julian just said that, I have to share
what's one of my favorite linesin the book. And I I love the
line because it got at somethingthat we were trying to get our
heads around for a long time.And then once we wrote it, it
just seemed like, okay. Now wehave our way forward. And like
many of the lines that I reallylove in the book, I have no idea
who started it, who wrote it.
(15:53):
It's something we both wrote,and that's all I can say about
it. But there's a line wherewe're trying to get at the
complexities of the arc storyand then get at the complexities
of Genesis. And we describeGenesis as an anthology of
origins and initiations. Offalse starts, restarts, and
continuing starting over. It wasonce we framed Genesis that way,
(16:17):
as a thing that keeps onbeginning, that we got our hook
into why the arc story is sopowerful.
It's never enough. It's notfoundational. It's filled with
mistakes. Things have to keepresetting. And that's what
Genesis as an anthology ofbeginnings really offers.
Julian Yates (16:34):
Right. Or even a a sort of an attempt to theorize
beginnings, to actually dealwith the moral philosophical
problems of beginnings. Have webegun yet? Was this a false
start? Was this a goodbeginning?
Is this what we hoped for? Whatwere the costs to this
beginning? What got unbegun sothat we could begin? All of
those sort of questions aboutthe way in which process or
(16:56):
making. Build yourself an arc.
It's a project. All of thosethings sort of feed into that.
And it's so funny because andthis is this is part of the fun
of this is that I didn't thinkyou were gonna refer to that
line. I thought you were gonnasay that, the line you were
thinking of, Jeffrey, was thatthe worst thing you can do is
think that you're not or nolonger on an arc that you got
off.
Steven Swarbrick (17:16):
Julian, you read my mind. My finger was on
that very line. This is on pagethree of the book, and maybe
I'll just start a little bitabove that because I think that
this passage in particular getstoward the oscillation between
beginnings and endings. At onepoint, you say, as a kind of
challenge to eco critics, toyour readers, let's look to the
future even if all the time wehave to look backward. So I
(17:39):
found that turn within thebeginning to be really
fascinating, but it continuesover onto the next page where
you write, The afterlife of theGenesis story offers a
nonconsolidary, non solidific,open structure for wrestling
with what it means to constructan inside and out, boundaries,
walls, and the costs of refugefor a restricted group.
(18:03):
So there's so much packed intothat, the idea of costs. It's
something that readers who maybethink they're familiar with the
Genesis story might alight onand find surprising, the
emphasis on boundaries,exclusions being part of what
the Genesis story is telling.And this is all wrapped in under
the heading of arc thinking.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (18:23):
The original title of that chapter was what
is called arc thinking. And wewanted to give it this really,
like, hard syntax to wrap yourmind around it to get it the
fact that our thinking is notactually human. It's this thing
that keeps happening in theworld. It's a kind of algorithm
that catches us up and makes usdo things. And if we're in it,
(18:45):
we have a really hard timegetting out of it.
We wanted to allow that some ofour thinking is not human
motivated. Or if it was set inprocess by humans, it escaped us
a long time ago, and it keepscoming back and doing things to
us. What we try to capture isthat our thinking, if left to
its own devices, will, like anynegative algorithm, actually
(19:08):
enact incredible violences uponus. It will exclude. It will
sort.
It will diminish. But like anykind of architecture, if we can
reconfigure it, open it up,change its possibilities, maybe
there is the possibility ofbuilding some kind of refuge in
it. Maybe there is thepossibility of within the
thinking, the the mechanics ofthe thought itself, altering it
(19:32):
so that there's more space forcohabitation, more space for
dwelling together.
Julian Yates (19:37):
And, I mean, the book ends, right, with the the
notion that arc thinkingcontinues beyond the finite
limits of a story or aniteration or a way of completing
the building project, writingproject, making project, making
a community, making a family,making a a a social unit,
establishing a differencebetween humans and animals, that
(19:59):
that actually will start over.It must. So that it's a
continuous process. I don'treally know what arc thinking
is. Do you, Jeffrey?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (20:07):
No. And I think that's one of the things
that I'm proud of about ourbook. We didn't come to a
definitive conclusion of, here'sour thinking. Here's how it
works. Here's your schematic.
Go ahead and do it. It was morethat it's a thing that we're
inside, and we have a reallyhard time seeing it's outside,
but it keeps on moving.
Julian Yates (20:26):
I think we can tell you when it goes wrong, it
means you think you're done.Where I'm left at the end of
this project is really thinkingthat there is no way to
ethically square out the processof arc building in a way that
makes you clean, that actuallyaccommodates everyone, that
(20:47):
there's actually a fault orthere's some kind of cut that is
part of that act. Our thinkingcan lead towards a complete
attempt to program the bordersgroup membership, and and that I
think is something that Jeffreyalluded to when he sort of
quoted the line that migratedthrough the book in and out in
various forms of what does thefascist arc look like. And that
(21:09):
is the tension, right, that Ithink puts pressure on the story
in terms of it being what lookslike a sort of potentially feel
good template for responding tothe challenges we face
environmentally in terms of a ofa kind of one size fits all
template for weathering disasterand turning it into catastrophe.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (21:29):
So Julian does a really great job too of
getting out why the book was sohard to end. You know, we had it
all sketched out right from thebeginning, but I believe the
original title of the lastchapter was landfall. How did it
change to landfalling, which Iknow you came up with, Julian,
and it's brilliant.
Julian Yates (21:47):
Okay. Jensen's emergency skin and the
brilliance of that story and thefact that both of us, at the
very beginning, were interestedin not writing off the miller's
tail, choices the miller's tail.I'm thinking about the flood of
laughter instead of the flood ofwater as a a generic mutation
that was was actually much moresignificant than than it might
(22:10):
appear. The chapter onlandfalling, right, is a series
of cautionary stories aboutthinking about landfall, about
reaching the end. But, yeah,we're I we're we're both
cautious about ending.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (22:21):
Yeah. So the the book actually doesn't really
end. It's just a recursiveseries of here's some
possibilities.
Steven Swarbrick (22:28):
Well, in a book this rich and this fun, I
can understand not wanting it toend. But since you've already
brought us back to the theliterary aspect of it and the
the generativity of these texts,maybe we can talk a little bit
more about some of the pressuresthat you had mentioned. You've
already quoted God's imperativeto Noah, make yourself an ark.
There's the literal reading, gomake yourself a physical ark,
(22:50):
but also the sense of makeyourself into a a vessel for ark
thinking. It's an enigmaticcommand.
And one of the things that Ithink is gonna be really useful
to a wide range of readers ofthis book is is how it makes
something that seems familiarand, as you had said, Julian,
maybe a little too cozy,unfamiliar, and strange.
(23:12):
Jeffrey, I was thinking aboutyour earlier work on monster
cultures, and there is somethingslightly monstrous, about the
arc narrative that is often nottalked about or overlooked,
maybe even repressed in thenarrative. And it's part of the
title of this book, The Archive,right, that there is this sort
of unconscious to the narrativethat you are trying to uncover.
(23:33):
So can you maybe walk us throughsome of the stranger elements of
the story that you bring to theforeground in this book?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (23:40):
Steven, I appreciate that question. And I
think for me, it gets at apersonal stake, which is just a
lifelong obsession with thingsthat are in excluded. I mean,
they're inside and excluded atthe same time. Right? And how
does that work?
And, honestly, that is the onetheme of everything I've ever
written as far as scholarshipgoes. It starts with monsters.
It goes through my work inenvironmental humanities. You
(24:02):
name it. And the arc is thefigure of an exclusion where
things are on the outside windup inside.
It's a preservational moment.One of the moments of
fascination for me because I'vedone so much work on giants is
the fact of the existence ofgiants both before and after the
ark. I'd wrestled in previouswork about medieval thinkings
(24:23):
through of how the giantssurvived the flood that was
supposed to wipe out everything.And it was in thinking through,
what is excluded from the arkand yet how it comes back that
helped me to find a kind offrame for what the ark can and
cannot do. Another thing thatI'll just say is that, you know,
we we have a chapter onstowaways that kind of catalogs
(24:46):
all the strange things that windup inside that you don't expect
to be there.
One thing that surprised us isthat unicorns are often depicted
as being on the ark and theobsession with trying to save
them. But having said all this,I believe if there's one
monstrous moment, it comes downto right after God decrees to
(25:07):
Noah, build the ark, and Noahdoes not respond. He simply
builds the ark. This is a realtension point and I think a
difference between Christianexegesis and Jewish discussion
of what happened. If Noah hadbeen, say, like, Cain or Abraham
or Moses, he might have said toGod, are you sure you really
(25:31):
want to destroy the earth?
But Noah does not challenge Godat all. He simply builds the
ark. Right? And you could takethat as an example of perfect
obedience, which it often issaid to be in the Christian
tradition, or you could takethat as a moral failing on
Noah's part. He could have savedthe world had he argued with a
(25:52):
god who often likes to be arguedwith and will change his mind
when someone challenges him.
So it was trying to thinkthrough that moment as well, the
different possible Noahs andNoah as monster himself or not.
Julian Yates (26:05):
I love that. But what I love most about it is
that I don't think that Jeffreyand I have come up with a single
question about the Genesis storythat generations of readers and
reenactors and makers have notasked also. In other words,
everything Jeffrey just saidoccurs in stories in which Noah
(26:28):
does argue with the divine orwhere missus Noah burns down not
just one but two arcs prior tothe one actually launching. One
moment that just tickles mestill is in his reading of the,
Noah story in his institutes.Calvin actually has the line,
Noah might have been forgivenfor thinking that God was
(26:51):
mocking him.
And there is that moment thatstill stays with me and I
actually is the bit that Iactually do reread where we
assemble all the differentquestions from, you know, across
the sweep of the book thatreaders have had for the Genesis
story. You know? What dideveryone eat on the ark? Was
there sex on the ark? Whatactually happened on the ark?
(27:15):
Or a moment that still stayswith me and that is, how on
earth are we supposed toactually gather and this is a
sort of pre industrial sort ofpre pre agricultural revolution
sort of question. How would weactually ever be in a position
where we could gather enoughfood to put on the arc for all
of this? So the questions thatwe ask take the sort of
(27:36):
different permutations based onthe the sort of the particular
moment that these readers arein. And so what what absolutely
kills me still is the way inwhich the complexity that we
don't experience when you yousort of don't really read the
story or imagine it as a set ofinstructions are already there
in plain sight, and that's sortof why the book is really an
(27:57):
archive more than an arc.
Steven Swarbrick (27:59):
Well, and these questions that you're
raising and others have raisedabout the story, it speaks to
why this story has endured theway it has because it generates
so many questions and perhaps sofew answers. But also a point
that you made in the book that Ifound so so true that provides
the reader a minimal scaffoldingfor navigating this. The story
(28:20):
itself is built in such a waythat it resists any kind of
narrative closure. You both havebeen working in the
environmental humanities forsome time, and this book is both
in the field of environmentalthinking insofar as the futures
it allows us to imagine. Do youthink that the Noah story
(28:41):
provides any challenges to thethe state of the field as it
currently exists, eco studies?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (28:47):
I don't think it's a coincidence that for
Julian and for me, the archivesthat we work in are early
archives. They're notcontemporary ones. Even though a
lot of the book is contemporaryin its focus, and we're
interested in all that, but bothof us are trained in a much
earlier archive. I will say forme as an environmental humanist
as well as a medievalist, Athing that drives me a little
(29:10):
bit crazy is the assumption inmuch of the environmental
humanities as practiced at thismoment that what we face now is
completely unprecedented, thathumans have never thought about
these issues seriously. In fact,what I find that contemporary
critics are really good at doingis a vast injustice to the past.
(29:31):
The people that lived before usgoing back thousands of years,
going back as far as people werewriting, were damn smart. They
came up with all kinds ofalternatives to the narrowed
stories that we often tell. Ifwe could more humanely come to
grips with the traditions thatwe're working with rather than
rejecting them out of hand orbelieving somehow that we're so
(29:53):
much better than the people thatcame before us, I actually think
we'd get a lot more traction onwhat's possible in the future.
So, Steven, you brought up theline about, you know, sometimes
looking to the future meanslooking to the past. And it
really is a curve or a vortexwhere if past touches future
making, a different futurebecomes possible through that
(30:13):
contamination or through thatopening up of possibility.
And one of the things the booktries really hard to do is to
give the past its due as astorehouse of possibility. Some
of it good, some of it bad, butnot something that we can
imagine that we have somehowsuperseded and it's over and
done and not relevant anymore.
Julian Yates (30:33):
Right. And, also in terms of what you mean by
futurity, what you mean by thefuture, you know, because the
danger, right, is that themoment you try to imagine that
is you fill it in with scriptsthat preexist, that you that go
unexamined or that you don'teven know that you're filling
in. I think having the sort ofbroadest sense of of how the
narrative is not quite whatpeople think it is and that it's
(30:55):
a much more complicated,contested set of stories that
are tuned to loss and that getreused, highly self consciously
reused as a as an attempt toproduce foundations, I think is
something that yes. I mean, we'dwe'd be pleased if it made the
field think about its ownperiodization, the the sort of
the automatic aspect to the wayperiodization works or doesn't
(31:19):
change or simply changes itsscale from, say, regnal dates
to, energy arrivals.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (31:26):
Maybe related to that too goes back to the
original subtitle of the bookadventures in groundless
reading. One of the things thatwe were trying to write against
is the relentless historicism ofso many fields where scholars
somehow convince themselves ifthey can only find the right
political or social context forsomething, they'll explain the
story. Then that will take thelife out of the story. And we're
(31:47):
really interested in ways inwhich narratives exceed their
contextual moments.
Julian Yates (31:52):
Absolutely. And the the affect way the sort of
the affective register in whichyou experience that frequently,
especially when you're workingon something like the genesis
story from theoretically thebeginning until the end of time,
is that when one feelsoverwhelmed by the scope of that
narrative, there's somethingnicely facetious about the
notion of grandless reading inthe sense of if someone says to
(32:16):
you, but your reading isgrandless, you can say, thank
you for noticing or notperiodizing in an automatic sort
of way.
Steven Swarbrick (32:25):
I'm really fascinated hearing you both talk
about the temporality of theproject, thinking about
possibility as something notjust located in the future or in
the present, but as somethingthat from a retrospective angle
that you can find in the pasttoo. This is a hopeful book, but
it does have that backwardlooking direction to it. And so
(32:49):
I'm curious, what are some ofthe resources for hope that
you're finding in both theoriginal arc narrative and some
of its later iterations? Andwhat are some of the meaningful
connections you found thinkingabout past and present?
Julian Yates (33:05):
First of all, there's always more on an arc
than you think there is. I mean,the arc is never merely what it
announces. It's so much morethan that. Hence, the the
presence of unicorns, thepresence of devils, the presence
of of everything that you can'tpossibly leave behind or imagine
life without. So the the thenotion of excess to it, it
(33:25):
becomes a structure that kind ofproliferates or beyond itself
even within its announcement.
So to a certain extent, thenarrative we we carry around
with us in our heads fromcentral casting is the most
parsimonious of arc narratives.It's impossible to imagine the
arc without stowaways, and thatautomatically can sort of
overwhelms the story. I'mthinking of the moment in
(33:48):
Jeanette Winterson's Oranges AreNot the Only Fruit where, in
other words, the capacity foridentifying with all the wrong
people. It should never beunderestimated as a readerly way
of combating a narrative thatyou, do not find hospitable. So
that, the protagonist of orangesare not the only fruit is
obsessed with a gorilla, madeout of a Brillo pad that always,
(34:12):
always goes overboard but isalways recovered to the ark.
There's always more.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (34:17):
There's always more, and in that more is hope.
One possible reading of Noahmaking the ark is an act of
hopelessness. He's given up onthe world. If he can save his
family, he'll save his family,and they sail away. But one of
the things that Julian and Icame back to again and again is
even from the very firstartistic depiction of an art
(34:39):
that we have, it's from thepoint of view of those who have
been left behind, the oneswho've been consigned to the
space of no hope.
So why is it that the artiststend to dwell with those who've
been excluded rather than theark itself? Genesis never offers
that. There's nobody outside ofthe ark. There's only Noah and
his family. Why is it thatartists resolutely stand with
(35:02):
those who are about to bedrowned?
There's hope in that. So wewanted to recover what an
expanded idea of refuge couldgive as far as hope. And then
another thing I'll say too is Ifind extremely tedious the kinds
of criticism that are built onnegation, on giving up, on lack
of hope. I think that that is noat is worse, where you declare
(35:24):
there's no future worthsalvaging, when you declare that
the structures we inhabit atthis moment are only good for
setting fire to or blowing upbecause there's just there's
nothing redeemable. You give upon a lot of people when you do
that, and you give up on theirfutures for them.
So what would a frame be inwhich even a catastrophe can
(35:45):
become a utopia? And RebeccaSolnit writes so eloquently on
this that sometimes whatdisaster does is reveal that the
preconditions of the disasterwere the injustice. And that
once things fall apart, there'sthe possibility of actually
creating a kind of utopia wheredifferent rules might be
imagined. So that that's wherewe get at the mixture of past
(36:08):
and future that can lead tohope. And we don't mean hope in
a way that's deceptive.
We don't mean hope in a way thatleads people on. We don't need,
like, Lauren Berlant's idea ofcruel optimism. We're not trying
to sell people on a vision of athing to come. Rather, it's a
hope that's imbued in every day.
Julian Yates (36:25):
Hope's not an achievable end or a commodity or
a product or a place you get to.Hope is a process, and and it's
a process largely of of inquiry,of questioning, of asking
difficult questions. I mean, areyou satisfied with the arc that
you're building? That thatassumption that you don't get to
be free of the act of actuallymaking a world, that you
(36:47):
actually have to inquire intothe consequences of individual
acts. So for me, hope is notabout ending, it's about a
continuity of process, not youdon't get to be done.
You never get to get to thefuture. It's about being
embedded in a series ofquestions. So the the genesis is
a feasibility study on makingsomething. Oh, don't do that.
(37:09):
You saw what happened.
Now we've got to work out whatthey did wrong. So more sort of
knower as systems engineer orsomething. I
Steven Swarbrick (37:16):
don't know.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (37:17):
There's an intimacy between the hope that
we're trying to imagine and eventhe educational project of
universities and otherinstitutions. And it's trying to
figure a way where humanitiesmatter moving forward and how to
make a more accessible world tomany rather than to shut things
(37:37):
down and keep it excluded,elite, or for the few.
Steven Swarbrick (37:41):
As I read the book, the words that kept coming
to mind were tension and andcontradiction as being key to
the kind of hope that you'reenvisioning. Whatever hope or
activism or futures we imaginehave to come from the tension
between, as you were saying,Jeffrey, earlier, between both
this idea of utopia that'simagined within the story, but
(38:03):
also this persistent negationthat, as you vividly describe,
is just built into thearchitecture itself. It has
borders. It has walls. And inyour chapters, you go into great
detail about the kind ofstructural divisions that go
into how it's imagined stilltoday in the in the kind of arc
revivals.
But I found really powerful thatyou aren't ending with exclusion
(38:27):
and negation, but using this asa starting point for thinking
about what new features for thehumanities and for the
environment can be derived fromthis story. And to that end,
still thinking within the frameof how this book fits within the
broader context of environmentalstudies, and I was thinking
about the arc as a figure inrelationship to other prevalent
(38:49):
figures like the Cyborg or acompanion species. I'm thinking
of Donna Haraway's work or themany kind of metaphors of
enmeshment and entanglement thatwe often find that I have used
and some of us have used in ourown work in the past and so
forth. And I'm wondering if withthe arc, if you were actively
trying to think beyond some ofthe tropes, some of the habits
(39:12):
of thought, dominate in thefield currently, and if you were
able to see a way outside ofthose frameworks in this book.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (39:21):
I don't know that there is an outside of the
frameworks, but I will say thatthe arc as we imagined it would
not have been possible withoutwriters and thinkers like Donna
Haraway and Miss Singh. You youname it. All all there are
theorists of entanglement andespecially those who work with a
feminist anti racist projectbehind them were essential to
(39:43):
trying to think through what thepossibilities are here. And a
lot of their work was reallyuseful for exploring what
happens in our space and whathappens outside of it. I suppose
and, Julian, correct me if I'mwrong on this, but I think one
of the things that surprised usis the arc, if it's a metaphor,
is a metaphor with a lot ofmatter behind it.
It keeps interjecting into ourworld. It keeps doing things. It
(40:07):
might be made of thought, but itkeeps materializing itself in
ways that can be eitherdestructive or productive
depending on how you think aboutit. And the theorists that we
read, the literature that'sbehind it, the creative thinking
that helped us to imagine whatan art can and cannot do really
gave us a lot of traction forfueling what the possibilities
(40:30):
are in the future.
Julian Yates (40:31):
I mean, it's interesting. We haven't had that
conversation exactly, have we,in the sense that I mean, just
sort of thinking about it now.If it's a if it's a metaphor,
I'm not sure where it where it'stransporting you to, or if it
actually ever really arrives.Because one way of thinking
about an Arkwright would be thatit is really a a vehicle for
getting you to a new place suchthat you think you are beyond
(40:54):
something. When in fact, what'slargely happened is that the
reduced dimensions of the worldyou've set in motion have
somewhat convincingly for thepeople on board actually simply
become the world.
And so one of the things that Ithink is, for me, I think really
important about the the arc as afigure is the way that the
(41:15):
illusion of an outside assomething that is disposed of is
always an illusion. It's stillthere. The latest arc story that
I've been watching is Silo, inwhich they said I'm not quite
sure how they're going to managethe plot arc of that in the
sense of once we actuallydiscover what everybody knows
and that is that the outside isactually just lovely apparently.
Steven Swarbrick (41:38):
I mean
Jeffrey J. Cohen (41:38):
that's such a spoiler, I'm not that far yet.
Julian Yates (41:41):
No, sorry. But what's that story going to do?
So one of the things I thinkthat I find constantly sort of
different about the the arc as afigure is that it it wants to
produce this sort of sense ofexact dimensions, but at the
same time, if you start to pokeon the walls, it turns out
they're spongy or someone's inthem or, that there's always
(42:04):
more there. We didn'tconsciously plan it as a as a
kind of counter tropal figure inthe terms that we were reading
it like the cyborg or the, orcompanion species. But I do
think that I mean, one of thethings I'd say about all of
those figures is that they'relargely still contested even in
the way they're staged.
I mean, the cyborg isn't forHaraway. It's an I mean, its
(42:28):
trope is irony, and it's fairlyneutral. It's contested. I mean,
you know, in that wonderfulCyborg Manifesto, it's still
very much a where are we on thesidewalk? What future will be
imagined?
Will it be progressive? Will itbe fascistic? Even the companion
species. Sort of discourses thator or or readers that wanna turn
those into necessarily positiveprogressive figures sort of you
(42:51):
have to sort of forget the factthat, say, a companion species
doesn't actually compute withinhuman notions of sociality or
community formation even. Yourgut bacteria are a companion
species with you or you are acompanion species to them, you
know, and they might have aparty when you die.
But all of those figures aremuch less stable, I think, than
(43:12):
once they start to getroutinized in reading, and
that's why I don't feel likewe've moved beyond the cyborg. I
don't feel like we've movedbeyond the companion species or
the multis you know, it they'reall slightly different ways of
staging a description and arefairly neutral, and I think the
ark is similar.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (43:28):
Also, an important and related destiny of
the ark is to become the slaveship that applies the middle
passage. So it is possible tofind yourself on the ark reduced
into cargo and to find your bodytransmuted into biomass and to
be sold and have a a destinythat you did not want. And, you
(43:48):
know, one of the chapters isabout the arc in the African
American imagination. What doesthe arc mean in the aftermath or
in the wake, as Sharp calls it,of a nation that's built on the
enslavement of a lot of people?What what do you do with that
fact?
The the blueprint of the arcenabled the building of the
(44:09):
slave ship.
Julian Yates (44:10):
Yeah. I think that's that should just be said
again. Go and say it again.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (44:14):
The building of the ark well, no. The
imagination of the ark enabledbuilding of the slave ship.
That's one of its destinies. Soit has terrible consequences,
but then it also opens up somepossibilities too, and we wanna
acknowledge both.
Steven Swarbrick (44:30):
I think it's really helpful to think of these
figures as as contestablefigures, including the orc. Arc.
And one of the things that Ienjoyed so much about this book
is that it for me, it reallyreanimated so much of what we've
been talking about in terms ofmajor influential figures like
Donna Haraway with the Incostudies and and her massive
contributions to the field aswell as other techs and
(44:51):
thinkers. I think that we need awhole another podcast to talk
about TV and filmrepresentations of the arc, silo
included, maybe once we are allcaught up. I wanted to conclude
by asking you a little bit aboutthe many visual illustrations in
this book.
It's a it's a beautiful book,and one of the things that I
think readers will be delightedby is that it includes authors'
(45:13):
photographs. It includes manyillustrations from medieval
manuscripts, site specificimages as well. I'm curious for
each of you, is there aparticular image from the book
that is illustrative of thepower of arc thinking as we have
been talking about it, as youwrite about it?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (45:32):
It it is I mean, we we're so lucky in that
the University of Minnesotaallowed us to include 40
illustrations and many of themin color, and we were truly
grateful for that. The one if Ihad to choose one, the one that
really stays with me and helpsme to frame the entire project
is a medieval one. No. It'sWilliam de Braille's his Psalter
(45:52):
where he decides he's going todepict something that's not in
Genesis, which is all of thebodies layered at the bottom of
the ocean as scalding watercontinues to pour down. And the
bodies are so peaceful as piledup in the strata.
The pitcher is gorgeous. It'sthe most vivid green. It's got
gold leaf to it. Everythingabout it invites the eye, and
(46:15):
then the eye comes and sees theembrace postmortem of the
humans, the birds of the air,the animals of the land,
everything the ark had to leavebehind in order for a small
community to be saved. And thefact that William de Braille's
in the thirteenth century, hehad to choose a limited number
of illustrations to make of theflood, chose that moment that's
(46:36):
not in Genesis to dwell on.
Really sticks with me and seemsto me an invitation to think
about what the story leaves out.
Julian Yates (46:45):
And there's no arc in that image?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (46:48):
No arc at all.
Julian Yates (46:49):
And it is an archive of the dead, of what is
theoretically outside the arc,but not outside his imagination.
Or, you know, with theproduction of an image it now
exists so the dead are beingbrought back or are there
funding the production of theark and you see similar things
in in very differently timedimages across the centuries. I
(47:12):
mean I couldn't not sort of alsojust remark on the fact that if
you want to play a game, youknow, as you navigate your
spaces around you, whether it bein New York or Minneapolis or
wherever you are in the world,you know, you can play arc
spotting, which I do. And thatis and you'll start to sort of
see references to Noah's Ark,and sometimes you'll walk into a
(47:33):
a convenience store or a adollar store, and you'll see a
little bit of ironic retailingwhere people juxtapose a a jump
into reading level two Noah'sArk book with a level three book
of the story of the Titanic. Andso one of the things that I
really am committed to as anotion is that the Ark story is
alive and well and constantlybeing reread and reenacted and
(47:56):
examined and probed and askedhopeful questions all around us.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (48:01):
So that illustration is one that Julian
took in the wilds of retailspaces.
Steven Swarbrick (48:06):
I just found it one day.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (48:07):
Yeah. He found it. He texted it to me. I was
just like, that's in the book.It's so perfect that somebody
juxtaposed the story of the arcwith the story of the Titanic,
and there they are sittingtogether.
Julian Yates (48:18):
And, also, it's a scene of reading or would be
reading also, which is justabsolutely fantastic. It's
pedagogical in that, in a veryhighly uncertain way, in an
anonymous way.
Steven Swarbrick (48:29):
Well, we began with whiskey, and I think we're
gonna end with uncertainty.Jeffrey and Julian, this has
been so much fun. Thank you forhaving this conversation with me
today. I I think it's one that,like the arc narrative itself,
could keep going. However, weare out of time.
Listeners, Noah's archive, it'sterrific. Please go out and get
yourself a copy. Great seeingyou both.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (48:51):
Steven, thank you so much.
Julian Yates (48:52):
Lovely to see you too. Thank you so much. Take
care.
Genesis is a story that wants to be misread.
Everything we know about thestory is not there.
Julian Yates (00:09):
The worst thing you can do is think that you're
not or no longer on an ark thatyou got off.
Steven Swarbrick (00:18):
Hello, and welcome to the University of
Minnesota Press podcast. My nameis Steven Swarbrick. I am the
author of The EnvironmentalUnconscious, Ecological Poetics
from Spencer to Milton,published by the University of
Minnesota Press this year. AndI'm joined by Jeffrey Cohen and
Julian Yates, coauthors of theoutstanding new book, Noah's
Archive, also published by theUniversity of Minnesota Press.
(00:42):
Jeffrey and Julian, it's so goodto be in conversation with you.
Would you please start us off byintroducing yourselves to our
listeners?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (00:48):
I'm Jeffrey Cohen. I'm the dean of
humanities at Arizona StateUniversity, and really happy to
be here today. Thanks, Steven.
Julian Yates (00:55):
Hi, Steven. Hi, Jeffrey. I'm Julian Yates. I
teach in the English departmentand in the Material Cultural
Studies at University ofDelaware, and it's a delight to
be here. Thank you fororganizing this, Steven.
Steven Swarbrick (01:07):
Thank you both. I'd like to begin by just
saying how much I enjoyedreading Noah's Arkiv. For
listeners who are hearing aboutit for the first time, it's a
book that engages with so much,both old and new, including big
umbrella fields like the bluehumanities, eco criticism,
critical race, immigration, andclimate change studies. It's
also, I I believe, a aremarkable demonstration of the
(01:28):
power of close reading. So thethe focus of the book is the
Genesis story of Noah and theark.
And throughout the book, you payfine grained attention to a
story that I think many readersfind spare, at times cryptic.
And in the process, you make anotherwise familiar story strange
and new and urgent for ourtimes. So it's a terrific book.
(01:48):
I'm excited to dive in. Whydon't we start with what brought
you together to work Arno'sarchive?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (01:55):
Julian, I wonder if we have two different
versions of the story.
Julian Yates (01:59):
We probably have three or four. Why don't you
start, and then I will give myversion, and it will be
identical to yours. It's reallyjust because, of course, you
know, you you can't write a aNoah's Ark book without two
authors.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (02:12):
So in my version of the story, it begins
in friendship. I had started asmaller Noah's Ark project a
little bit before Julian and Istarted to talk about some of
the themes of the book. And themore Julian and I spoke, we do
have a deep friendship and havebeen presenting projects
together for a long time. Themore obvious it was to me that
(02:32):
we needed to write this booktogether. And I think the moment
of crystallization, strangelyenough, was in a whiskey bar in
Kalamazoo, Michigan, where wedecided that as tired as we
were, we were going to hash outthe entire book on a piece of
paper and then take a picture ofit and send it to Doug Armato
and ask if Minnesota wasinterested in it.
(02:55):
We drank a lot of whiskey. Wedid a lot of thinking. We had a
lot of fun plotting it out, andthen the book set sail from
there. That that's my version.
Julian Yates (03:04):
I mean, I think in fairness to Jeffrey, he had been
interested in giants once upon atime, which probably
necessitated having to thinkabout the, the Genesis narrative
and and Noah's archive andNoah's Ark, the story of that.
For me, it had been a sort offixture of childhood in a very
sort of remote story you know,but you don't actually ever read
(03:26):
it or let alone close read it.But, Jeffrey, remember, we had a
prebook that we didn't write,which this book became a much
more grounded version of, whichwas about escaping the gravity
of planet Earth and, I think itwas called Adventures in
Groundless Reading or somethinglike that. The more we actually
started to try and think aboutwhat it would mean to do that,
(03:48):
the more we both sort ofconnected with this figure of
the ark as Earth, as spaceship,as all these different kinds of
vessels.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (03:57):
That's right. In fact, adventures in
groundless reading was theoriginal subtitle of the book.
And then as the book gainedvelocity and started to plot its
own trajectory, we abandonedthat one. We abandoned the next
one, which was, towards anecology of refuge. It just felt
like Noah's archive says it all,so that's what it became.
Steven Swarbrick (04:19):
Well, in part of the the archive you're
exploring, it's, of course,biblical. You also range across
a number of contemporary mediaexamples. I was fascinated by
the composition of the book. Asone would expect, anyone who's
familiar with your work, itblends literary and
philosophical analysis, but italso incorporates firsthand
experience of traveling to arcsites and your own sort of
(04:43):
narratives of of encounteringpeople who are trying to
reimagine the arc story andbring it to life today. For many
of us who work in earlierperiods, whether it's early
modern or medieval, we rarelyget to see our primary texts
come alive in front of our eyes.
So I'm curious, was it alwayspart of your plan to unfold
first person narrative into thework, or did that just emerge as
(05:05):
you were writing? And how didyour encounters inform your
thinking?
Julian Yates (05:11):
Couple of responses to that. One is that I
think we're both really veryaware the period at about fifty
year intervals, people writeNoah's Ark books, big academic
Noah's Ark books dating backreally as far as you'd like to
go. I mean, AthanasiusKircher's, monumental sort of
seventeenth century art bookcomes to mind, but there are so
(05:33):
many others. And the storyalways gets essentially retold,
maximized beyond its biblicalsort of skeletal form. And so we
were very conscious that there'sa tradition, a genre, a sort of
mini genre or minor genre of artbooks out there.
So we're very conscious thatthey would shift by discipline
(05:55):
and that the arc story would bedeployed for a variety of
different reasons, whether it'sbecause of the discovery of a
fossil record, right, in the theearly modern period and having
to deal with that or whetherit's to do with, in our
historical moment, theecological devastation of
climate change. At the sametime, we're both, I think,
(06:16):
committed to the idea that,thinking, theory making happens
in a variety of differentdiscourses. I'm gonna sound
facetious, but I'm not, thatmuch of what we call literature
and culture works out as sort ofGenesis fan fiction. But,
Jeffrey, you wanna talk aboutwhy we why why don't you just
talk about whatever you wannatalk about, but you could talk
(06:37):
about why we went to ARCS? Wewere worried we were Noah.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (06:41):
Well, I mean, it it was also impossible not to
go to visit ARCS. It was not anoption not to make these visits.
So we thought if we're gonnalook at the long history of
imagining Noah's Ark andrealizing it in literature, in
art, we needed to go to someongoing art projects. COVID
threw a monkey wrench into it.We didn't get to visit as many
(07:02):
as we wanted to, but we didreally enjoy the ones that we
went to, and it was formative.
So I said the project began infriendship. It was sustained by
friendship, and Julian and Itravel well together. We both
have similar obsessions andsimilar strange ideas of fun. So
visiting these places where wewould take a lot of notes and
(07:24):
then sitting in a often in acoffee shop and writing
frantically together into aGoogle Doc and then maybe even
staying up until late at nighthaving moved from a coffee shop
to a bar. We'd get a lot ofstuff done and a lot of thinking
done together, and that kind of,like, mutuality of processing
really served us well.
(07:44):
Having said that, not everyvisit was as enjoyable as we
thought it would be. So visitingthe ARC encounter in Kentucky
was soul crushing. It was not apleasant experience. It actually
made us feel bad that we spentmoney on it. It's such a
homophobic space.
There there's lots that we couldhave written against it, but we
(08:06):
always found ways through it inorder to find something
affirmative. So we followed upthat visit with a visit to the
local library as a kind ofantidote to the fascistic
structure of that reallyfundamentalist arc. Every
encounter was valuable foradvancing the project. Every
encounter helped us to see boththe possibilities and the limits
(08:27):
of what it is to build an arc inplace. And every encounter
helped us to think throughexactly what our project was
about.
Steven Swarbrick (08:35):
Jeffrey, following up on that last
comment, the encounters that youhad and some of the challenges
that you both faced, did theseexperiences shed light on the
story itself? I found these,narratives so fascinating and
and useful because it created aresonant loop between the
analysis that you're doing ofthe story, what you were finding
(08:56):
in the kind of contemporary arcbuilding that you're seeing
unfold, and also some of the,again, the challenges, the
resistances that are built intothose structures and in those
places.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (09:08):
I would actually say what the
ethnographic adventures that wehad, what they enabled was the
writing of the book itself. Andin the original
conceptualization of the book,every chapter would have a kind
of interspace where there'd bean ethnographic encounter with
one of the arks. Eventually, wedecided that it would just be
(09:28):
the first chapter, had a bitabout the first ark that we went
to visit. It would relate someof the writing and thinking that
we'd done elsewhere. But,actually, most of the thinking
that we did as as site visitsgot incorporated into the
structure of the book.
So it didn't seem necessary toput those narrations into the
book itself. We do havefootnotes that show you exactly
where to find what we wrote onthose things, but they didn't
(09:51):
seem quite as important to thebook. The book already contained
them. It was the first encounterthat seemed the most important
to us, not only because it was avisit to an arc that will never
be completed, and it was a visitthat opened up possibilities to
us that we didn't expect at all.It was also the fact that we
realized in retrospect that wewent to Frostburg, Maryland to
(10:14):
see the Arc of Safety, and wewere ill equipped to ask the
questions that were at the heartof the book.
And it was the lingeringquestions that we did not ask
that helps us to frame the restof the book. So by the time we
got to our encounter inKentucky, we were ready for
opening things up, got thingsshut down there. But, again, it
(10:34):
became really important todeciding what the stakes were of
imagining the kinds of refuge abook like this could give.
Julian Yates (10:43):
I think that what I'd say is that part of the
commitment of going to theauction process largely. Right?
I mean, Jeffrey, I mean, that'sreally part of the commitment to
it is that I mean, we felt thatwe were writing a book, which
was also, to a certain extent,building a kind of arc or
archive of this story. We werecommitted to the idea that the
story is really ongoing. It'sstill working itself out.
(11:04):
When you ask, Steven, did thevisits shed light on previous
arc iterations or even theGenesis story itself, I think it
did in the sense that we were sotuned into the way in which
these arcs in process wereattempts to begin something, to
actually set something inmotion, and sometimes they
stalled and got stuck, like inthe Frostburg example, the first
(11:26):
one we went to. To a certainextent, I felt like we were ill
equipped every time weencountered one of these arks
and and were constantly learningby being there. We were beguiled
to a certain extent on ourinitial arrival in the Kentucky
Arc because it was so not whatwe had expected. And as someone
who's most sort of distantreader of ethnographic theory, I
(11:47):
mean, that was a crash course inthe sort of what it means to
encounter the metaphysicsworldview of of other ways of
thinking and being, and we triedto be polite largely. I mean,
that was our attempt to sort ofresist the urge to close read at
that point and to be open towhat we were encounter until we
were shut out or invited in.
(12:07):
And that was a early constantphenomenon that really, I think,
gave us energy while writing.And the other thing that I just
want to sort of I mean, thatJeffrey, that you mentioned was
just that urgency of livewriting because we both sort of
collaborated with other peopleand this gave us a way to stay
in contact. I It was obviouslycut short by the pandemic, but
then then we moved to Zoom.
Steven Swarbrick (12:28):
It's like opening possibilities and
closing off other ones. It's arecurring thread throughout the
book. One of the things that youhighlight at the beginning of
the book, and and this isemphasized up to the very end,
the arc story is a story abouthuman and nonhuman endurance in
unlivable times. At the sametime, one of the things you
(12:48):
highlight so well in this bookis that this particular arc
story has itself endured. It'snot the only flood narrative.
It's not even the first. WhenI'm teaching the Genesis story,
I teach it alongside the epic ofGilgamesh, and my students are
always really amazed to see thethe connections between them.
I'm curious, having written thisbook, why do you think that this
particular flood narrative orthis particular arc story has
(13:11):
endured the way that it has?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (13:13):
Because we live in catastrophe. There's
something about the way Genesisnarrates a very human experience
of anthropogenic climate change.Right? God sends this flood
because of human action, so itis human caused. And there's
something about that enduranceof family and attempts to save
(13:35):
things that even as it goesbadly wrong, it's such a good
story to think with.
One of the things that Julie andI found continually fascinating
is the ways in which Genesis, inits narration of the flood, is a
story that wants to be misread,that wants to open up
possibility. And whenever you goback to it, you keep realizing
(13:56):
everything we know about thestory is not there. And yet
there's something about thestructuration of the story that
wants you to put in the what isnot there. And its long history
over time is about populating itwith possibility. So we have so
many contradictory stories ofthe flood.
Some of them are really usefulfor the times we live in right
now. Some of them are reallydangerous in the ways that they
(14:20):
seem to value gated communitiesand closing things down and
small survival. So we wanted tothink through what are the
actual affirmative possibilitiesfor refuge that are in the
story, and then what kinds oflimited readings endure to this
day, and give us a cognitiveframe for dealing with
catastrophe that is actually notvery useful, And in fact, maybe
(14:42):
doing us great harm.
Julian Yates (14:44):
Yeah. Absolutely. And the other thing that comes
through is the way in which thestory, if you reduce it to its
governing tropes or images ofjust what comes to mind if you
close your eyes and you say thestory and you think of the story
I mean, the figure of the ark,happy animals and humans,
landfall, rainbow. The pull ofthe story is when reduced to
(15:05):
those elements is really turningdisaster into catastrophe, into
something that's passed. Andthat that that's really part of
the narrative pool that makes itsuch a powerful story, not about
disaster, but about a foundationabout producing something new as
long as you don't dwell too longon what happens next.
Right? I mean, it's a way ofsort of clawing your way into
(15:27):
the future in a way withoutreally actually having to
imagine it.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (15:31):
Because Julian just said that, I have to share
what's one of my favorite linesin the book. And I I love the
line because it got at somethingthat we were trying to get our
heads around for a long time.And then once we wrote it, it
just seemed like, okay. Now wehave our way forward. And like
many of the lines that I reallylove in the book, I have no idea
who started it, who wrote it.
(15:53):
It's something we both wrote,and that's all I can say about
it. But there's a line wherewe're trying to get at the
complexities of the arc storyand then get at the complexities
of Genesis. And we describeGenesis as an anthology of
origins and initiations. Offalse starts, restarts, and
continuing starting over. It wasonce we framed Genesis that way,
(16:17):
as a thing that keeps onbeginning, that we got our hook
into why the arc story is sopowerful.
It's never enough. It's notfoundational. It's filled with
mistakes. Things have to keepresetting. And that's what
Genesis as an anthology ofbeginnings really offers.
Julian Yates (16:34):
Right. Or even a a sort of an attempt to theorize
beginnings, to actually dealwith the moral philosophical
problems of beginnings. Have webegun yet? Was this a false
start? Was this a goodbeginning?
Is this what we hoped for? Whatwere the costs to this
beginning? What got unbegun sothat we could begin? All of
those sort of questions aboutthe way in which process or
(16:56):
making. Build yourself an arc.
It's a project. All of thosethings sort of feed into that.
And it's so funny because andthis is this is part of the fun
of this is that I didn't thinkyou were gonna refer to that
line. I thought you were gonnasay that, the line you were
thinking of, Jeffrey, was thatthe worst thing you can do is
think that you're not or nolonger on an arc that you got
off.
Steven Swarbrick (17:16):
Julian, you read my mind. My finger was on
that very line. This is on pagethree of the book, and maybe
I'll just start a little bitabove that because I think that
this passage in particular getstoward the oscillation between
beginnings and endings. At onepoint, you say, as a kind of
challenge to eco critics, toyour readers, let's look to the
future even if all the time wehave to look backward. So I
(17:39):
found that turn within thebeginning to be really
fascinating, but it continuesover onto the next page where
you write, The afterlife of theGenesis story offers a
nonconsolidary, non solidific,open structure for wrestling
with what it means to constructan inside and out, boundaries,
walls, and the costs of refugefor a restricted group.
(18:03):
So there's so much packed intothat, the idea of costs. It's
something that readers who maybethink they're familiar with the
Genesis story might alight onand find surprising, the
emphasis on boundaries,exclusions being part of what
the Genesis story is telling.And this is all wrapped in under
the heading of arc thinking.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (18:23):
The original title of that chapter was what
is called arc thinking. And wewanted to give it this really,
like, hard syntax to wrap yourmind around it to get it the
fact that our thinking is notactually human. It's this thing
that keeps happening in theworld. It's a kind of algorithm
that catches us up and makes usdo things. And if we're in it,
(18:45):
we have a really hard timegetting out of it.
We wanted to allow that some ofour thinking is not human
motivated. Or if it was set inprocess by humans, it escaped us
a long time ago, and it keepscoming back and doing things to
us. What we try to capture isthat our thinking, if left to
its own devices, will, like anynegative algorithm, actually
(19:08):
enact incredible violences uponus. It will exclude. It will
sort.
It will diminish. But like anykind of architecture, if we can
reconfigure it, open it up,change its possibilities, maybe
there is the possibility ofbuilding some kind of refuge in
it. Maybe there is thepossibility of within the
thinking, the the mechanics ofthe thought itself, altering it
(19:32):
so that there's more space forcohabitation, more space for
dwelling together.
Julian Yates (19:37):
And, I mean, the book ends, right, with the the
notion that arc thinkingcontinues beyond the finite
limits of a story or aniteration or a way of completing
the building project, writingproject, making project, making
a community, making a family,making a a a social unit,
establishing a differencebetween humans and animals, that
(19:59):
that actually will start over.It must. So that it's a
continuous process. I don'treally know what arc thinking
is. Do you, Jeffrey?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (20:07):
No. And I think that's one of the things
that I'm proud of about ourbook. We didn't come to a
definitive conclusion of, here'sour thinking. Here's how it
works. Here's your schematic.
Go ahead and do it. It was morethat it's a thing that we're
inside, and we have a reallyhard time seeing it's outside,
but it keeps on moving.
Julian Yates (20:26):
I think we can tell you when it goes wrong, it
means you think you're done.Where I'm left at the end of
this project is really thinkingthat there is no way to
ethically square out the processof arc building in a way that
makes you clean, that actuallyaccommodates everyone, that
(20:47):
there's actually a fault orthere's some kind of cut that is
part of that act. Our thinkingcan lead towards a complete
attempt to program the bordersgroup membership, and and that I
think is something that Jeffreyalluded to when he sort of
quoted the line that migratedthrough the book in and out in
various forms of what does thefascist arc look like. And that
(21:09):
is the tension, right, that Ithink puts pressure on the story
in terms of it being what lookslike a sort of potentially feel
good template for responding tothe challenges we face
environmentally in terms of a ofa kind of one size fits all
template for weathering disasterand turning it into catastrophe.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (21:29):
So Julian does a really great job too of
getting out why the book was sohard to end. You know, we had it
all sketched out right from thebeginning, but I believe the
original title of the lastchapter was landfall. How did it
change to landfalling, which Iknow you came up with, Julian,
and it's brilliant.
Julian Yates (21:47):
Okay. Jensen's emergency skin and the
brilliance of that story and thefact that both of us, at the
very beginning, were interestedin not writing off the miller's
tail, choices the miller's tail.I'm thinking about the flood of
laughter instead of the flood ofwater as a a generic mutation
that was was actually much moresignificant than than it might
(22:10):
appear. The chapter onlandfalling, right, is a series
of cautionary stories aboutthinking about landfall, about
reaching the end. But, yeah,we're I we're we're both
cautious about ending.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (22:21):
Yeah. So the the book actually doesn't really
end. It's just a recursiveseries of here's some
possibilities.
Steven Swarbrick (22:28):
Well, in a book this rich and this fun, I
can understand not wanting it toend. But since you've already
brought us back to the theliterary aspect of it and the
the generativity of these texts,maybe we can talk a little bit
more about some of the pressuresthat you had mentioned. You've
already quoted God's imperativeto Noah, make yourself an ark.
There's the literal reading, gomake yourself a physical ark,
(22:50):
but also the sense of makeyourself into a a vessel for ark
thinking. It's an enigmaticcommand.
And one of the things that Ithink is gonna be really useful
to a wide range of readers ofthis book is is how it makes
something that seems familiarand, as you had said, Julian,
maybe a little too cozy,unfamiliar, and strange.
(23:12):
Jeffrey, I was thinking aboutyour earlier work on monster
cultures, and there is somethingslightly monstrous, about the
arc narrative that is often nottalked about or overlooked,
maybe even repressed in thenarrative. And it's part of the
title of this book, The Archive,right, that there is this sort
of unconscious to the narrativethat you are trying to uncover.
(23:33):
So can you maybe walk us throughsome of the stranger elements of
the story that you bring to theforeground in this book?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (23:40):
Steven, I appreciate that question. And I
think for me, it gets at apersonal stake, which is just a
lifelong obsession with thingsthat are in excluded. I mean,
they're inside and excluded atthe same time. Right? And how
does that work?
And, honestly, that is the onetheme of everything I've ever
written as far as scholarshipgoes. It starts with monsters.
It goes through my work inenvironmental humanities. You
(24:02):
name it. And the arc is thefigure of an exclusion where
things are on the outside windup inside.
It's a preservational moment.One of the moments of
fascination for me because I'vedone so much work on giants is
the fact of the existence ofgiants both before and after the
ark. I'd wrestled in previouswork about medieval thinkings
(24:23):
through of how the giantssurvived the flood that was
supposed to wipe out everything.And it was in thinking through,
what is excluded from the arkand yet how it comes back that
helped me to find a kind offrame for what the ark can and
cannot do. Another thing thatI'll just say is that, you know,
we we have a chapter onstowaways that kind of catalogs
(24:46):
all the strange things that windup inside that you don't expect
to be there.
One thing that surprised us isthat unicorns are often depicted
as being on the ark and theobsession with trying to save
them. But having said all this,I believe if there's one
monstrous moment, it comes downto right after God decrees to
(25:07):
Noah, build the ark, and Noahdoes not respond. He simply
builds the ark. This is a realtension point and I think a
difference between Christianexegesis and Jewish discussion
of what happened. If Noah hadbeen, say, like, Cain or Abraham
or Moses, he might have said toGod, are you sure you really
(25:31):
want to destroy the earth?
But Noah does not challenge Godat all. He simply builds the
ark. Right? And you could takethat as an example of perfect
obedience, which it often issaid to be in the Christian
tradition, or you could takethat as a moral failing on
Noah's part. He could have savedthe world had he argued with a
(25:52):
god who often likes to be arguedwith and will change his mind
when someone challenges him.
So it was trying to thinkthrough that moment as well, the
different possible Noahs andNoah as monster himself or not.
Julian Yates (26:05):
I love that. But what I love most about it is
that I don't think that Jeffreyand I have come up with a single
question about the Genesis storythat generations of readers and
reenactors and makers have notasked also. In other words,
everything Jeffrey just saidoccurs in stories in which Noah
(26:28):
does argue with the divine orwhere missus Noah burns down not
just one but two arcs prior tothe one actually launching. One
moment that just tickles mestill is in his reading of the,
Noah story in his institutes.Calvin actually has the line,
Noah might have been forgivenfor thinking that God was
(26:51):
mocking him.
And there is that moment thatstill stays with me and I
actually is the bit that Iactually do reread where we
assemble all the differentquestions from, you know, across
the sweep of the book thatreaders have had for the Genesis
story. You know? What dideveryone eat on the ark? Was
there sex on the ark? Whatactually happened on the ark?
(27:15):
Or a moment that still stayswith me and that is, how on
earth are we supposed toactually gather and this is a
sort of pre industrial sort ofpre pre agricultural revolution
sort of question. How would weactually ever be in a position
where we could gather enoughfood to put on the arc for all
of this? So the questions thatwe ask take the sort of
(27:36):
different permutations based onthe the sort of the particular
moment that these readers arein. And so what what absolutely
kills me still is the way inwhich the complexity that we
don't experience when you yousort of don't really read the
story or imagine it as a set ofinstructions are already there
in plain sight, and that's sortof why the book is really an
(27:57):
archive more than an arc.
Steven Swarbrick (27:59):
Well, and these questions that you're
raising and others have raisedabout the story, it speaks to
why this story has endured theway it has because it generates
so many questions and perhaps sofew answers. But also a point
that you made in the book that Ifound so so true that provides
the reader a minimal scaffoldingfor navigating this. The story
(28:20):
itself is built in such a waythat it resists any kind of
narrative closure. You both havebeen working in the
environmental humanities forsome time, and this book is both
in the field of environmentalthinking insofar as the futures
it allows us to imagine. Do youthink that the Noah story
(28:41):
provides any challenges to thethe state of the field as it
currently exists, eco studies?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (28:47):
I don't think it's a coincidence that for
Julian and for me, the archivesthat we work in are early
archives. They're notcontemporary ones. Even though a
lot of the book is contemporaryin its focus, and we're
interested in all that, but bothof us are trained in a much
earlier archive. I will say forme as an environmental humanist
as well as a medievalist, Athing that drives me a little
(29:10):
bit crazy is the assumption inmuch of the environmental
humanities as practiced at thismoment that what we face now is
completely unprecedented, thathumans have never thought about
these issues seriously. In fact,what I find that contemporary
critics are really good at doingis a vast injustice to the past.
(29:31):
The people that lived before usgoing back thousands of years,
going back as far as people werewriting, were damn smart. They
came up with all kinds ofalternatives to the narrowed
stories that we often tell. Ifwe could more humanely come to
grips with the traditions thatwe're working with rather than
rejecting them out of hand orbelieving somehow that we're so
(29:53):
much better than the people thatcame before us, I actually think
we'd get a lot more traction onwhat's possible in the future.
So, Steven, you brought up theline about, you know, sometimes
looking to the future meanslooking to the past. And it
really is a curve or a vortexwhere if past touches future
making, a different futurebecomes possible through that
(30:13):
contamination or through thatopening up of possibility.
And one of the things the booktries really hard to do is to
give the past its due as astorehouse of possibility. Some
of it good, some of it bad, butnot something that we can
imagine that we have somehowsuperseded and it's over and
done and not relevant anymore.
Julian Yates (30:33):
Right. And, also in terms of what you mean by
futurity, what you mean by thefuture, you know, because the
danger, right, is that themoment you try to imagine that
is you fill it in with scriptsthat preexist, that you that go
unexamined or that you don'teven know that you're filling
in. I think having the sort ofbroadest sense of of how the
narrative is not quite whatpeople think it is and that it's
(30:55):
a much more complicated,contested set of stories that
are tuned to loss and that getreused, highly self consciously
reused as a as an attempt toproduce foundations, I think is
something that yes. I mean, we'dwe'd be pleased if it made the
field think about its ownperiodization, the the sort of
the automatic aspect to the wayperiodization works or doesn't
(31:19):
change or simply changes itsscale from, say, regnal dates
to, energy arrivals.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (31:26):
Maybe related to that too goes back to the
original subtitle of the bookadventures in groundless
reading. One of the things thatwe were trying to write against
is the relentless historicism ofso many fields where scholars
somehow convince themselves ifthey can only find the right
political or social context forsomething, they'll explain the
story. Then that will take thelife out of the story. And we're
(31:47):
really interested in ways inwhich narratives exceed their
contextual moments.
Julian Yates (31:52):
Absolutely. And the the affect way the sort of
the affective register in whichyou experience that frequently,
especially when you're workingon something like the genesis
story from theoretically thebeginning until the end of time,
is that when one feelsoverwhelmed by the scope of that
narrative, there's somethingnicely facetious about the
notion of grandless reading inthe sense of if someone says to
(32:16):
you, but your reading isgrandless, you can say, thank
you for noticing or notperiodizing in an automatic sort
of way.
Steven Swarbrick (32:25):
I'm really fascinated hearing you both talk
about the temporality of theproject, thinking about
possibility as something notjust located in the future or in
the present, but as somethingthat from a retrospective angle
that you can find in the pasttoo. This is a hopeful book, but
it does have that backwardlooking direction to it. And so
(32:49):
I'm curious, what are some ofthe resources for hope that
you're finding in both theoriginal arc narrative and some
of its later iterations? Andwhat are some of the meaningful
connections you found thinkingabout past and present?
Julian Yates (33:05):
First of all, there's always more on an arc
than you think there is. I mean,the arc is never merely what it
announces. It's so much morethan that. Hence, the the
presence of unicorns, thepresence of devils, the presence
of of everything that you can'tpossibly leave behind or imagine
life without. So the the thenotion of excess to it, it
(33:25):
becomes a structure that kind ofproliferates or beyond itself
even within its announcement.
So to a certain extent, thenarrative we we carry around
with us in our heads fromcentral casting is the most
parsimonious of arc narratives.It's impossible to imagine the
arc without stowaways, and thatautomatically can sort of
overwhelms the story. I'mthinking of the moment in
(33:48):
Jeanette Winterson's Oranges AreNot the Only Fruit where, in
other words, the capacity foridentifying with all the wrong
people. It should never beunderestimated as a readerly way
of combating a narrative thatyou, do not find hospitable. So
that, the protagonist of orangesare not the only fruit is
obsessed with a gorilla, madeout of a Brillo pad that always,
(34:12):
always goes overboard but isalways recovered to the ark.
There's always more.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (34:17):
There's always more, and in that more is hope.
One possible reading of Noahmaking the ark is an act of
hopelessness. He's given up onthe world. If he can save his
family, he'll save his family,and they sail away. But one of
the things that Julian and Icame back to again and again is
even from the very firstartistic depiction of an art
(34:39):
that we have, it's from thepoint of view of those who have
been left behind, the oneswho've been consigned to the
space of no hope.
So why is it that the artiststend to dwell with those who've
been excluded rather than theark itself? Genesis never offers
that. There's nobody outside ofthe ark. There's only Noah and
his family. Why is it thatartists resolutely stand with
(35:02):
those who are about to bedrowned?
There's hope in that. So wewanted to recover what an
expanded idea of refuge couldgive as far as hope. And then
another thing I'll say too is Ifind extremely tedious the kinds
of criticism that are built onnegation, on giving up, on lack
of hope. I think that that is noat is worse, where you declare
(35:24):
there's no future worthsalvaging, when you declare that
the structures we inhabit atthis moment are only good for
setting fire to or blowing upbecause there's just there's
nothing redeemable. You give upon a lot of people when you do
that, and you give up on theirfutures for them.
So what would a frame be inwhich even a catastrophe can
(35:45):
become a utopia? And RebeccaSolnit writes so eloquently on
this that sometimes whatdisaster does is reveal that the
preconditions of the disasterwere the injustice. And that
once things fall apart, there'sthe possibility of actually
creating a kind of utopia wheredifferent rules might be
imagined. So that that's wherewe get at the mixture of past
(36:08):
and future that can lead tohope. And we don't mean hope in
a way that's deceptive.
We don't mean hope in a way thatleads people on. We don't need,
like, Lauren Berlant's idea ofcruel optimism. We're not trying
to sell people on a vision of athing to come. Rather, it's a
hope that's imbued in every day.
Julian Yates (36:25):
Hope's not an achievable end or a commodity or
a product or a place you get to.Hope is a process, and and it's
a process largely of of inquiry,of questioning, of asking
difficult questions. I mean, areyou satisfied with the arc that
you're building? That thatassumption that you don't get to
be free of the act of actuallymaking a world, that you
(36:47):
actually have to inquire intothe consequences of individual
acts. So for me, hope is notabout ending, it's about a
continuity of process, not youdon't get to be done.
You never get to get to thefuture. It's about being
embedded in a series ofquestions. So the the genesis is
a feasibility study on makingsomething. Oh, don't do that.
(37:09):
You saw what happened.
Now we've got to work out whatthey did wrong. So more sort of
knower as systems engineer orsomething. I
Steven Swarbrick (37:16):
don't know.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (37:17):
There's an intimacy between the hope that
we're trying to imagine and eventhe educational project of
universities and otherinstitutions. And it's trying to
figure a way where humanitiesmatter moving forward and how to
make a more accessible world tomany rather than to shut things
(37:37):
down and keep it excluded,elite, or for the few.
Steven Swarbrick (37:41):
As I read the book, the words that kept coming
to mind were tension and andcontradiction as being key to
the kind of hope that you'reenvisioning. Whatever hope or
activism or futures we imaginehave to come from the tension
between, as you were saying,Jeffrey, earlier, between both
this idea of utopia that'simagined within the story, but
(38:03):
also this persistent negationthat, as you vividly describe,
is just built into thearchitecture itself. It has
borders. It has walls. And inyour chapters, you go into great
detail about the kind ofstructural divisions that go
into how it's imagined stilltoday in the in the kind of arc
revivals.
But I found really powerful thatyou aren't ending with exclusion
(38:27):
and negation, but using this asa starting point for thinking
about what new features for thehumanities and for the
environment can be derived fromthis story. And to that end,
still thinking within the frameof how this book fits within the
broader context of environmentalstudies, and I was thinking
about the arc as a figure inrelationship to other prevalent
(38:49):
figures like the Cyborg or acompanion species. I'm thinking
of Donna Haraway's work or themany kind of metaphors of
enmeshment and entanglement thatwe often find that I have used
and some of us have used in ourown work in the past and so
forth. And I'm wondering if withthe arc, if you were actively
trying to think beyond some ofthe tropes, some of the habits
(39:12):
of thought, dominate in thefield currently, and if you were
able to see a way outside ofthose frameworks in this book.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (39:21):
I don't know that there is an outside of the
frameworks, but I will say thatthe arc as we imagined it would
not have been possible withoutwriters and thinkers like Donna
Haraway and Miss Singh. You youname it. All all there are
theorists of entanglement andespecially those who work with a
feminist anti racist projectbehind them were essential to
(39:43):
trying to think through what thepossibilities are here. And a
lot of their work was reallyuseful for exploring what
happens in our space and whathappens outside of it. I suppose
and, Julian, correct me if I'mwrong on this, but I think one
of the things that surprised usis the arc, if it's a metaphor,
is a metaphor with a lot ofmatter behind it.
It keeps interjecting into ourworld. It keeps doing things. It
(40:07):
might be made of thought, but itkeeps materializing itself in
ways that can be eitherdestructive or productive
depending on how you think aboutit. And the theorists that we
read, the literature that'sbehind it, the creative thinking
that helped us to imagine whatan art can and cannot do really
gave us a lot of traction forfueling what the possibilities
(40:30):
are in the future.
Julian Yates (40:31):
I mean, it's interesting. We haven't had that
conversation exactly, have we,in the sense that I mean, just
sort of thinking about it now.If it's a if it's a metaphor,
I'm not sure where it where it'stransporting you to, or if it
actually ever really arrives.Because one way of thinking
about an Arkwright would be thatit is really a a vehicle for
getting you to a new place suchthat you think you are beyond
(40:54):
something. When in fact, what'slargely happened is that the
reduced dimensions of the worldyou've set in motion have
somewhat convincingly for thepeople on board actually simply
become the world.
And so one of the things that Ithink is, for me, I think really
important about the the arc as afigure is the way that the
(41:15):
illusion of an outside assomething that is disposed of is
always an illusion. It's stillthere. The latest arc story that
I've been watching is Silo, inwhich they said I'm not quite
sure how they're going to managethe plot arc of that in the
sense of once we actuallydiscover what everybody knows
and that is that the outside isactually just lovely apparently.
Steven Swarbrick (41:38):
I mean
Jeffrey J. Cohen (41:38):
that's such a spoiler, I'm not that far yet.
Julian Yates (41:41):
No, sorry. But what's that story going to do?
So one of the things I thinkthat I find constantly sort of
different about the the arc as afigure is that it it wants to
produce this sort of sense ofexact dimensions, but at the
same time, if you start to pokeon the walls, it turns out
they're spongy or someone's inthem or, that there's always
(42:04):
more there. We didn'tconsciously plan it as a as a
kind of counter tropal figure inthe terms that we were reading
it like the cyborg or the, orcompanion species. But I do
think that I mean, one of thethings I'd say about all of
those figures is that they'relargely still contested even in
the way they're staged.
I mean, the cyborg isn't forHaraway. It's an I mean, its
(42:28):
trope is irony, and it's fairlyneutral. It's contested. I mean,
you know, in that wonderfulCyborg Manifesto, it's still
very much a where are we on thesidewalk? What future will be
imagined?
Will it be progressive? Will itbe fascistic? Even the companion
species. Sort of discourses thator or or readers that wanna turn
those into necessarily positiveprogressive figures sort of you
(42:51):
have to sort of forget the factthat, say, a companion species
doesn't actually compute withinhuman notions of sociality or
community formation even. Yourgut bacteria are a companion
species with you or you are acompanion species to them, you
know, and they might have aparty when you die.
But all of those figures aremuch less stable, I think, than
(43:12):
once they start to getroutinized in reading, and
that's why I don't feel likewe've moved beyond the cyborg. I
don't feel like we've movedbeyond the companion species or
the multis you know, it they'reall slightly different ways of
staging a description and arefairly neutral, and I think the
ark is similar.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (43:28):
Also, an important and related destiny of
the ark is to become the slaveship that applies the middle
passage. So it is possible tofind yourself on the ark reduced
into cargo and to find your bodytransmuted into biomass and to
be sold and have a a destinythat you did not want. And, you
(43:48):
know, one of the chapters isabout the arc in the African
American imagination. What doesthe arc mean in the aftermath or
in the wake, as Sharp calls it,of a nation that's built on the
enslavement of a lot of people?What what do you do with that
fact?
The the blueprint of the arcenabled the building of the
(44:09):
slave ship.
Julian Yates (44:10):
Yeah. I think that's that should just be said
again. Go and say it again.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (44:14):
The building of the ark well, no. The
imagination of the ark enabledbuilding of the slave ship.
That's one of its destinies. Soit has terrible consequences,
but then it also opens up somepossibilities too, and we wanna
acknowledge both.
Steven Swarbrick (44:30):
I think it's really helpful to think of these
figures as as contestablefigures, including the orc. Arc.
And one of the things that Ienjoyed so much about this book
is that it for me, it reallyreanimated so much of what we've
been talking about in terms ofmajor influential figures like
Donna Haraway with the Incostudies and and her massive
contributions to the field aswell as other techs and
(44:51):
thinkers. I think that we need awhole another podcast to talk
about TV and filmrepresentations of the arc, silo
included, maybe once we are allcaught up. I wanted to conclude
by asking you a little bit aboutthe many visual illustrations in
this book.
It's a it's a beautiful book,and one of the things that I
think readers will be delightedby is that it includes authors'
(45:13):
photographs. It includes manyillustrations from medieval
manuscripts, site specificimages as well. I'm curious for
each of you, is there aparticular image from the book
that is illustrative of thepower of arc thinking as we have
been talking about it, as youwrite about it?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (45:32):
It it is I mean, we we're so lucky in that
the University of Minnesotaallowed us to include 40
illustrations and many of themin color, and we were truly
grateful for that. The one if Ihad to choose one, the one that
really stays with me and helpsme to frame the entire project
is a medieval one. No. It'sWilliam de Braille's his Psalter
(45:52):
where he decides he's going todepict something that's not in
Genesis, which is all of thebodies layered at the bottom of
the ocean as scalding watercontinues to pour down. And the
bodies are so peaceful as piledup in the strata.
The pitcher is gorgeous. It'sthe most vivid green. It's got
gold leaf to it. Everythingabout it invites the eye, and
(46:15):
then the eye comes and sees theembrace postmortem of the
humans, the birds of the air,the animals of the land,
everything the ark had to leavebehind in order for a small
community to be saved. And thefact that William de Braille's
in the thirteenth century, hehad to choose a limited number
of illustrations to make of theflood, chose that moment that's
(46:36):
not in Genesis to dwell on.
Really sticks with me and seemsto me an invitation to think
about what the story leaves out.
Julian Yates (46:45):
And there's no arc in that image?
Jeffrey J. Cohen (46:48):
No arc at all.
Julian Yates (46:49):
And it is an archive of the dead, of what is
theoretically outside the arc,but not outside his imagination.
Or, you know, with theproduction of an image it now
exists so the dead are beingbrought back or are there
funding the production of theark and you see similar things
in in very differently timedimages across the centuries. I
(47:12):
mean I couldn't not sort of alsojust remark on the fact that if
you want to play a game, youknow, as you navigate your
spaces around you, whether it bein New York or Minneapolis or
wherever you are in the world,you know, you can play arc
spotting, which I do. And thatis and you'll start to sort of
see references to Noah's Ark,and sometimes you'll walk into a
(47:33):
a convenience store or a adollar store, and you'll see a
little bit of ironic retailingwhere people juxtapose a a jump
into reading level two Noah'sArk book with a level three book
of the story of the Titanic. Andso one of the things that I
really am committed to as anotion is that the Ark story is
alive and well and constantlybeing reread and reenacted and
(47:56):
examined and probed and askedhopeful questions all around us.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (48:01):
So that illustration is one that Julian
took in the wilds of retailspaces.
Steven Swarbrick (48:06):
I just found it one day.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (48:07):
Yeah. He found it. He texted it to me. I was
just like, that's in the book.It's so perfect that somebody
juxtaposed the story of the arcwith the story of the Titanic,
and there they are sittingtogether.
Julian Yates (48:18):
And, also, it's a scene of reading or would be
reading also, which is justabsolutely fantastic. It's
pedagogical in that, in a veryhighly uncertain way, in an
anonymous way.
Steven Swarbrick (48:29):
Well, we began with whiskey, and I think we're
gonna end with uncertainty.Jeffrey and Julian, this has
been so much fun. Thank you forhaving this conversation with me
today. I I think it's one that,like the arc narrative itself,
could keep going. However, weare out of time.
Listeners, Noah's archive, it'sterrific. Please go out and get
yourself a copy. Great seeingyou both.
Jeffrey J. Cohen (48:51):
Steven, thank you so much.
Julian Yates (48:52):
Lovely to see you too. Thank you so much. Take
care.
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