The Life of Lines

Sometimes we come across upon an author, whose works we want to reread a number of times. Tim Ingold is one of those writers for me. His words beams and beckons. “The Life Of Lines” is a sociological and ecological study of ourselves. The discipline of former sociology was established on the foundation of the ecological notion of the superorganic. Tim Ingold starts his study on the premise of every living being is a line, or a bundle of lines. He dares to say social life lies not in the accretion of blobs but in the correspondence of lines. He illustrates this situation with the Matisse’s famous painting, ‘Dance.’ They interpenetrate to form a boundless and ever-extending meshwork. In the following Part, he considers about where we are standing in. Ingold pays attention to our breath, to aerial dimension of our surroundings. For so long, no-one has given a thought to the air. Rather, many philosophers and theorists has suppressed the aerial dimension of bodily movement and experience. They are forced to conclude that neither air exist, nor material, and therefore superfluous to their theory. If this is true, there could be no weather in this world. These attitude contradicts our experience, even patently absurd. What does it mean to think ourselves as human. In the final Part, he considers about education, not only an education method for younger generations but also an attitude of ourselves. He concludes we are not becoming humans, we are required to do hard task of self-making. Our becoming humans is continually overtaking our being.In the recent history of modern thought, knots and knotting have been largely sidelined, even though the knotting of fibers being among the most ancient of human arts. In the knot of the navel, every one of us retains a memory of the original moment, coming into this world. This will explain why babies unconsciously fumble their navels, whenever they long for mothers. Japanese building culture, in its commitment to the tectonic, stands in stark contrast to the western tradition, emphasizing on stereotomic mass. Ingold’s explanation on a mortise and tenon goes down well with me. Japanese shrine carpenters do not use any nails in constructing the huge and solid architecture. His consideration goes on to the ground, where terrestrial human beings live on. To understand the ground, he suggests to re-invert our world. Our experience of living in the contained wold influences our thinking about inhabiting this world. The interior is remodeled as a simulacrum of the exterior space in the contemporary world. We are hard to realize the fact every mountain is a fold, not a structure placed upon the ground. The stereotomic and tectonic arts meet and merge in the wall and its construction. The strength of dry-stone wall lies in the stones’ collective settlement with the ground, which has continually to be negotiated. The ground, where we live, is in movement, infinitely variegated, is composite and undergoes continuous generation. The ground is an instrument for us to know. Ingold concludes the part I, with the knowledge runs in the ground is social when it percolates the ground.As the only practitioner of linealogy, Ingold inspects deep affiliation between lines and the weather. The weather comprises the ever-present undercurrent for our action. He says weather and mood are one and the same. He finds a direct conversion of circulation into linearity in the whorl. The pedestrian walks and breathes simultaneously. In this sense, track or path is as much aerial as terrestrial. He says, the breath is a kind of knot. Breathing the air, we perceive various perceptual things in the air. The overwhelming ambition in the post-Renaissance architecture has been a history of keeping the weather out. Weathering implicates continuous metamorphosis, in other words, in-between status of unending deterioration and perpetual beginning. In the wake of industrial revolution, wisdom of agrarian and seafaring traditions marginalized, and scientific meteorologist brought the weather indoors. Modern concept of mood space, aura, and atmospheres, is completely absent of weather. In the weather-world, every living being is necessarily immersed in an atmosphere, stitches itself into the world along the interwoven lines of meshwork. Atmosphere on the inhalation and meshwork on the exhalation are two sides of the flesh, corresponding to the two senses of ‘being with.’ Light, color, and sound, as the atmospheric product of a fission-fusion reaction, swirls around in the air. In explaining them, he refers to the familiar Gogh’ painting, ‘The Starry Night.’ Every line has colors, and every color goes out along a line. It is what Gogh sees with. Color gives the line life, lend atmosphere to them. Sound pitches and peals, breathes life into the line.Ingold begins the final Part with citing gnomic lines by the president Grant. Being a verb, in other words, to lead life is to lay down lines. He introduces a neologism of ‘anthropogenesis,’ which is a kind of making-in-growing. He compares our ‘life of lines’ to a wayfaring labyrinthine path follower. We need to pay attention to things, and adjust our gait accordingly. Our doings are framed within this undergoing. The right method of education should be rendered us attentive, opened up in readiness for the ‘not yet’ of what is to come. He says mastery and vulnerability are two sides of the same coin of attention. Ingold stresses the importance of imagination. He says the imagination is the generative impulse of a life, the aspiration of not-yet-being. In the ever-unfolding life of us, things are always on the way to being given. To give priority to the labyrinth is to place the things we do in the current of the life we undergo. Unfinished, freed up from ends and objectives, he reasons, the world is once more restored to presence. The ‘in-between’ is the realm of the life of lines. However, this in-between was converted into a between in the history of modernity, when the world was turned outside in and boxed inside the theater. If we release the inmates of the box to the fullness of earth and sky, the atmosphere becomes a movement of the in-between, comes into haptic contact. The life of lines is a process of correspondence of lines. Ingold appeals to us all to join with others in an ongoing exploration of what the possibilities and potentials of life might be. He concludes the life of lines must carry on.

Ingold offers cogent ideas for living a life that embraces an active participation in the dynamism of the world, as a transformative becoming-with that is practice-led. There are useful excursions in the literature, woven with experience and thoughtful inquiry. There are many excellent ideas that cohere in an unfolding narrative invigorating anthropology and enriching thought. In dialogue with a suite of philosophic, intellectual and artistic endeavours connecting with the emergent and generative possibilities blossoming in the day to day. The chapters are pithy easy to read, while these turn on larger sections that open out and swerve recursively, outlining and responding to clearly posed questions that formulate meaningful and noteworthy arguments, illustrated in inimical style by useful thought experiments and interesting and diverse examples. The practice of lineology is a useful approach to the transformation of everyday life, attuned to a quality of life worth living.

Ingold has done it again. Like his previous work -- Lines: A Brief History -- he has found new ways that thinking in and along lines illuminates so many facets of our worlds and our beliefs. Always a trenchant thinker, these two works are more philosophical as meditations on life than his usual concerns with anthropology or biology. This one might be a tad more abstract than the first one, but it is astounding how rich and insightful it is when I thought he had said it all before.

Good

Sensitive, disruptive, path-breaking (once again), critical and magnanimous. Discover this important anthropological work for yourself. It is worth the journey(s).

An inspiring and well written book that goes beyond the discipline of anthropology. Particularly relevant to arts practice, in my opinion, but interesting to a wide range of people.

Ingold clearly presents notions that he has refined and expanded upon over 20 years, now much more free from the tedious task of presenting these notions in opposition to more commonly held notions within social sciences, philosophy and academia in general.

Un libro de Ingold, no hay más que decir. - - - - - - - - - - -

Prof Ingold has laid the foundations for some excellent intellectual ideas which are laid out in this book.