{"id":461,"date":"2024-07-16T13:08:18","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T17:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/?page_id=461"},"modified":"2024-12-20T21:13:15","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T02:13:15","slug":"non-human-agency","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/news-and-events\/scs-panel-2025\/non-human-agency\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-Human Agency and Hidden Labour in Vitruvius\u2019 De architectura"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bettina Reitz-Joosse, University of Groningen<\/strong><\/p>\n

This paper analyses one specific mechanism by which the labour of unskilled or enslaved workers is marginalized or ‘hidden’ in Roman literature. I argue that the foregrounding of non-human agency in Vitruvius’ De architectura<\/em> decentres human labourers and downplays their creative agency.<\/p>\n

For Vitruvius, the best architectural endeavours are always collaborative. His interest in the collaboration between human<\/em> actors is very limited, however; rather, the creation of architecture is presented throughout De architectura<\/em> as a process in which human and non-human forces interact constructively. The ideal architect not only models his creations on the principles of natura<\/em> but accords her an active role in the co-creation of architecture. Natura<\/em>, too, is an architect. (Roby 2013; Reitz 2013).<\/p>\n

Agency is distributed across the entire natural world in De architectura<\/em>: for example, water (8.3.4-5), wood (2.1.7), or climate (6.1) are all able to act upon the world, including its humans. The language which Vitruvius employs to indicate the material vitality and agency of material actants is necessarily anthropomorphizing (cf. Bennett\u00a0 2010, 118\u201319): ‘driven by thirst’, lime plaster ‘slurps up’ pigments of paint (7.3.7); water ‘gives itself without payment’ to its human users (8.praef<\/em>.3)<\/p>\n

Vitruvius’ account of architectural creation questions boundaries between making and growing (e.g. 2.praef<\/em>.3, cf. Hallam and Ingold 2014) and between humans, plants and materials. In doing so, however, it renders less<\/em> visible another locus of labor<\/em>: the contribution, skill and agency of low-status manual workers. If nature herself generously provides humans with a rich array of building materials, the human labour of extracting, lifting or transporting such materials is minimized (2.1.7); where the fertile ground feeds its population, the farmer who works the land or the baker who turns grain to bread disappear from view (2.praef<\/em>.3, 8.praef<\/em>.3). A particularly stark example is De architectura<\/em> 2.7, a chapter on the quarrying of stone. Labour in the quarries was among the physically most challenging and dangerous kinds of work in antiquity, in part carried out by enslaved workers and convicts. Vitruvius directs the reader’s attention to a different form of labour entirely. A good architect, he argues, learns to respect stone types’ specific properties and behaviour so that the stones<\/em> can ‘bear the hard work’ (sustineant labores<\/em>) of supporting a roof or being exposed to the elements. The keen attention and concern for the labor <\/em>required of materials themselves (also at 2.8.19, 7.1.6) crowds out the labor<\/em> of human agents. Ultimately, Vitruvius constructs an ecology of architecture that is no less hegemonic for being sensitive to non-human agency: the effect of recognizing the labor <\/em>of nature is to minimize the agency of low status laborers.<\/p>\n

Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things<\/em>. Durham: Duke University Press.<\/p>\n

Hallam, Elizabeth, and Tim Ingold, eds. 2014. Making and Growing: Anthropological Studies of Organisms and Artefacts<\/em>. Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception. Farnham: Ashgate.<\/p>\n

Reitz, Bettina. 2013. ‘Nature’s Helping Hand: Cooperation between Builder and Nature as a Rhetorical Strategy in Vitruvius, Statius and Pliny the Younger’. In The Ideologies of Lived Space in Literary Texts, Ancient and Modern<\/em>, edited by Jo Heirman and Jacqueline Klooster, 125\u201340. Amsterdam: Academia Press.<\/p>\n

Roby, Courtney. 2013. ‘Natura Machinata: Artifacts and Nature as Reciprocal Models in Vitruvius’. Apeiron<\/em> 46 (4): 419\u201345.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bettina Reitz-Joosse, University of Groningen This paper analyses one specific mechanism by which the labour of unskilled or enslaved workers is marginalized or ‘hidden’ in Roman literature. I argue that the foregrounding of non-human agency in Vitruvius’ De architectura decentres human labourers and downplays their creative agency. For Vitruvius, the best architectural endeavours are always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23724,"featured_media":0,"parent":142,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/461"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":624,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/461\/revisions\/624"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}