scholarmedieval-studiesecocriticismphilosophy-of-historyethics
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
American scholar working at the intersection of medieval studies, ecocriticism, and philosophy of history; author of "Time Out of Memory" (in E. Scala and S. Federico, eds., The Post-Historical Middle Ages, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). The wiki encounters Cohen via Décarie-Daigneault 2024's use of Cohen's daughter's mourning of Lindow Man — a 2000-year-old naturally mummified bog corpse displayed in the British Museum — as the paradigm-case for the ethical register of transtemporality: an engagement with the past as past, structured around acknowledgment of coexistence with the virtual passence of others rather than coexistence with another in the present.
Key Points
- The Lindow Man scene. Cohen 2009 (p. 55) recounts that during a visit to the British Museum his daughter became inconsolable at the sight of Lindow Man's preserved corpse. He records her saying: "I want Lindow Man to be OK. I don't want him to be dead." Her reaction was "accompanied by tears, shaking, a loss of words." Cohen wonders whether his daughter had been "the first to mourn for Lindow Man."
- Mourning as past-directed sorrow. For Décarie-Daigneault, Cohen's case shows mourning structured not around "an event that happened" (a present that came to pass) but around "the past as such, a passing that is always already realized, a pure past that was never present" (Décarie-Daigneault 2024 §3.2). This makes Cohen's case a working model of intersubjectivity organized around coexistence with the virtual passence of others.
- Refuse to petrify. Cohen's prescription (2009 p. 55): "perhaps the best we can do [...] is to refuse to petrify bodies into objects, and objects into inert incarnations of some lost and unchanging historical moment." Décarie-Daigneault treats this as the ethical pivot of the cave-art encounter: the trace must be engaged in its transtemporal aliveness, not frozen into determinate object.
Connections
- supplies the ethical paradigm-case for transtemporality §"Coexisting with the past" — Cohen's mourning shows transtemporal engagement as ethical comportment, not decryption.
- is read through decarie-daigneault-2024-crooked-finger — Décarie-Daigneault uses Cohen's case in §3.2 as the ethical bridge between Toadvine's haunting and Dufourcq's vivre selon.
- converges with Annabelle Dufourcq's authenticity-as-enacted reading — Cohen's "refuse to petrify" and Dufourcq's vivre selon both reject preservation-as-purity in favor of taking-up as ethical relation.
Open Questions
- Is Cohen primarily a Lindow Man scholar, or is the case incidental to his broader project? The 2009 article is in a volume on "post-historical" Middle Ages, suggesting Cohen's interest is in challenging conventional periodization rather than specifically in Lindow Man. Direct engagement with Cohen's broader work (including his books on monsters, ecocriticism, and prehistoric stones) would clarify.
- What is the relationship between Cohen's "post-historical" and Décarie-Daigneault's transtemporality? Both refuse to flatten the past into a chronological line. Cohen's framing is closer to medieval-studies methodology; Décarie-Daigneault's is closer to phenomenology. Whether the two converge philosophically or merely thematically remains open.
Sources
- decarie-daigneault-2024-crooked-finger — wiki's only source. Cites Cohen, Jeffrey, "Time Out of Memory," in E. Scala and S. Federico (eds.), The Post-Historical Middle Ages, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p. 55 (notes 47, 48, 49, 54).