Noah's Arkive by Jeffrey J. Cohen, and Julian Yates (review)

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• Noah's Arkive by Jeffrey J. Cohen, and Julian Yates
• Michael Cop

Cohen, Jeffrey J., and Julian Yates, Noah's Arkive, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2023; paperback; pp. 416; 39 b/w photos, 9 colour plates; R.R.P. US $29.95; ISBN 9781517904241.

Jeffrey J. Cohen and Julian Yates's Noah's Arkive repurposes the biblical story of the Flood (Genesis 6–9) to explore potential habits of thought that could arise from the story and have dire social and ecological effects. The authors argue that salvific arks are never an end in themselves; rather, they are part of a story that perpetuates a seemingly endless sequence of (often ill-fated) rebeginnings. Cohen and Yates convincingly urge readers to question the challenges of ark-building, to consider the problems of inclusion and exclusion from that ark, and to engage counter-perspectives about such objects and events. Noah's Arkive is a wide-ranging survey of depictions, adaptations, and recreations of the Flood story from the Vienna Genesis manuscript to Playmobil's toy 'My Take Along 1.2.3 Noah's Ark'.

Rather than providing an in-depth study of any one period's representations of the Flood, the chapters thematically collect centuries of representations of the story, demonstrating how we can rethink its events and choices to make them more socially and environmentally prosperous for our futures. 'How to Think Like an Ark' follows Cohen and Yates's experiences of visiting physical ark reconstructions in the US, demonstrating why the story of the ark perpetuates itself even though arks have the potential to close off thinking, sympathy, or resources. The chapter introduces the admonishing refrain that 'the worst thing you can do, we have learned, is to imagine that you are no longer on an ark' (p. 3). 'No More Rainbows' takes the rainbow as a reminder that the events do not end with the polychromatic covenant but are simply a part of a larger story that continues to end and begin over and over. 'Outside the Ark' looks at the various depictions of those excluded from the ark and therefore exposed to catastrophe, reminding readers that arks that seemingly preserve for better times beg the question, 'better for whom?' 'Inside the Ark' discusses arks as salvific repositories, but questions what gets saved, how, and at what cost, recognising that 'all containers are cruel, no matter how apparently welcoming. Arks are no different' (p. 159). 'Stow Away!' posits that while communities by their nature sort and exclude, those same communities struggle with that exclusivity. The chapter aims to question the exclusion inherent to arks so that we can see them as possible locations of encounter and interaction. 'Ravens and Doves' considers the two animals playing more than passive parts in the Flood story, delving into the potentials of both obediently reliable and unpredictably progressive roles. Readers follow the raven towards the improvisatory and 'un-inevitable' possibilities that can come [End Page 313] with abandoning an ark (Chapter 7, 'Abandon Ark!') because, 'in its worst manifestations, the ark is like all symbolic and material architectures that preserve a chosen few while enacting violence on and against many and may function as a vessel for the conveyance of white-supremacist fantasies and histories, privileging the superiority of an imagined European West over any concept of shared human dignity' (p. 278). 'Abandon Ark!' considers conserving life by never boarding a vessel built for refusal rather than affirmation.

At its core, Noah's Arkive argues for figurative arks of inclusion, and the book itself conceptually supports that argument. It is impressive in its coverage, making centuries of textual and visual adaptations of the Flood story easily accessible to a general readership. As with many cross-over books, and because of the thematic approach of Noah's Arkive, readers cannot expect a concentrated exploration of any one period, and the texts under discussion are described in (often pages-long) summary for readers who have not (or might not) read the texts in question. Stitched in among contemporary depictions, its many references to medieval and early modern works will nevertheless be of interest to medievalists and early modernists who wish to make...