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Digging into Heidegger

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Upon reading Ingold’s “Making”, we discovered that Martin Heidegger, a German Philosopher and one of the most important thinkers of modern times, was cited numerous times to support the text’s main arguments. Born in 1889, Heidegger published his first major work, “Being and Time”, at the age of 1933, when he was recognised for his philosophical contribution to phenomenology and the movement of existentialism. In philosophy’s realm of metaphysics, Heidegger focuses on the study of fundamental ontology, which can be more easily understood as the study of “what it means for something to be”. In Ingold’s “Making”, 4 of his other works are cited, which are ”Poetry, Language, Thought” (1971), “Parmenides” (1972), “Basic Writings” (1993) and “The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (1995).

From these works of Heidegger, his diatribe against the typewriter was used to support Ingold’s argument in the chapter “Drawing the Line”, as well as in the chapter “Telling by Hand”, where the philosopher’s criticism of technology’s effects on human essence was employed. His fundamental ontology was also greatly useful to Ingold’s, as in the chapter ”Round mound and earth sky”, it was drawn to make the important distinction between an object and a thing, where “people” are said to fall into the latter of these two categories of existence. So, in summary, we can see that Heidegger’s Philosophy laid the essential foundation for Ingold’s main arguments in these three chapters, but how exactly do they support the text in “Making”?

The Object at Hand…

For Heidegger, the category of an object is definable as being “complete in itself”. The confrontational “over-againstness” that characterises an object can be understood by the example of a chair. We may look at the chair and interact physically with it, but there exists an invisible distance between us and the chair as an object, for we are unable to join in with the process of its formation. In short, an object exists independent of our perception of it and is in itself complete. A thing, on the other hand, Heidegger defines as a “coming together of materials”; it is fluid and inviting. When we interact with a thing, we do not experience such a distance as with an object, and, as such, “people” would be considered a thing under this definitive categorisation.

Further in the chapter “Telling by hand”, Heidegger challenged the notion that human essence lies in the mind, proposing a focus on the hand instead. He argued that rather than being a mere instrument of the mind, the hand is the precondition of the possibility of having instrumentality. Hence is the saying, having a thing “at hand”, even when it is intangible, such as an upcoming event. For Heidegger, humans having hands is the fundamental essence that differentiates man from mere animals, as we are creatures capable of “world-forming”. On the other hand, he insists humans do not “have” hands, rather the hands hold the very essence of what makes us human to our core (Parmenides, 80). The hand offers us a world of contradictions; through our hand, we can enact greetings, commit murder, and even document the world. 

The Irony of Typing…

In his work, Parmenides, he deepens his perception of the hand to an extension of communication. He explains, handwriting is defined to be words as script (by the hand), and inasmuch as it holds the pen, it also holds one humanity; this is the essential difference between writing and typing with a typewriter. He describes typing as a transcript or a preservation of the handwritten word. In the realm of writing, the typewriter has essentially robbed the hand of its power. Now the act of typing affords a sense of anonymity over the more personalised counterparts; the handwritten words contain meaning beyond the text’s inherent interpretation. Ingold highlights Heidegger’s aversion to the typed word; “with scarcely disguised revulsion, ‘writes “with” the typewriter’. [Heidegger] puts the ‘with’ in inverted commas to indicate that typing is not really a writing with at all”(Making, 122). The hand loses its agency and signature on its writing. Stripped down to its core meaning by type, he claims the very essence of each individually written word is misunderstood when labelled as “the same when typed”. (Heidegger would NOT like this work…) To tell, or more specifically, write a story, one must feel the world and be in the world. Through type, experiences, stories, and lives are reduced to transmissions of encoded information.

Ingold’s Refute

Although Heidegger has some interesting interpretations on the human interaction with media, Ingold notes that Heidegger is a rather bitter older man. Most of his work is obsessed with picking apart the rise of technology and the decay of humanity in response. In comparison he showcases Leroi-Gourhan, a genuine technology enthusiast who encouraged the rise of technology in place of human’s inferior physiological forms. Through the many objects our hand holds, Ingold notes–above all–the hand of others to be held, both in guiding and to be led by the hand. He lingers on the distinct qualities of the human hand, down to the anatomy. Not only does he note the importance of the hand, but the hierarchy of fingers, for the finger may offer feeling and touch, yet it cannot hold without help from the thumb. Through the vehicle of typing, he compares other similar extensions of the hand. He questions a forklift driver’s ability to feel the weight of the load he lifts. Aside from the otherwise two-dimensional medium of typing, he also notes the sensation of the keys while typing, and questions if the typist notices the nuance in shape.

As a fierce guardian of the physical, manual space, Heidegger strongly disavows the integrity of technological assistance and its ability to portray a meaningful story. In this interpretation, the very act of typing in favour of writing, strips inherent depth from a piece. He emphasises the value of the human hand as the pinnacle symbol of the essence of humanity.

Maxine Gray & Nam Pham

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From Material to Object: Weaving the In-Between

In Chapter 2 (The materials of life) in Making, Ingold describes the lifelike qualities of raw materials we use to create objects. He illustrates how we are accustomed to think of making as a project: we start with an idea of a goal, and with raw material to achieve it, and once we think the material has taken on intended form, we have produced an artefact. However, he argues that the entire process of making is actually one of growth, and the maker is a participant in a world of active materials. To support his position, Ingold references French philosopher Gilbert Simondon and his critique of the hylomorphic model of making. The Aristotelian word itself is a combination of Latin words hyle (matter) and morphe (form). This scheme posits each object and body as a combination of form and matter, and Simondon, through a detailed description of the creation process of a brick, argues that this model neglects a very important aspect of this process: the energy involved to transform the “formless” clay into a “finished” brick. Thus, rather than the maker imposing her designs on a world that is waiting to receive them, Ingold, supported by Simondon, argues that the maker is simply intervening in worldly processes that are already going on.

About Gilbert Simondon

Our focus is primarily extracted from the work of Gilbert Simondon of Saint-Étienne, France, born on October 2, 1924. From an early age, Simondon became interested in the act of questioning things, a habit that had transitioned into a lifelong passion for research and teaching. He had completed his secondary studies at the Lycée Fauriel in Saint-Étienne and went down the post secondary avenue of which he was most loyal to: philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris under the supervision of Martial Gueroult, a French philosopher preceding Simondon. It was during his studies in Paris when he had started expanding his palette within the sciences, exploring physics, mineralogy, and psychophysiology, and within the arts, developing interest in the cultures of literature, music, and surrealist art. Science, however, was where he found that his philosophical studies could be enlightened by the most, even branching out to obtain a degree in psychology at other institutions. After several years of teaching philosophy, psychology, languages, and 20th century literature at secondary and post secondary level, Simondon ventured back into academia to get a Master’s degree in philosophy at Sorbonne University. Simondon began studying the subject of individuation in 1952, when he reframed the individual being starting from the process of individuation rather than individuation starting from the individual.

“I have chosen the notion of individuality and, for a year, I have been trying to make a reflexive theory of the criteria of individuality. (…) in fact, one must grasp the being before it has been analyzed into individual and environment: the individual-environment ensemble is not sufficient in itself; one can neither explain the individual by the environment nor the environment by the individual, and one cannot reduce one to the other. The individual and the environment are an analytical phase genetically and logically posterior to a syncretic phase constituted by the existence of a first mixture.” 

— Gilbert Simondon, January 1954 to Martial Gueroult.

https://gilbert.simondon.fr/content/biographie

Simondon on the Hylomorphic Model

Simondon’s thesis, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, invites a new perspective on remodelling frameworks in metaphysics. Rather than adhering to the hylomorphic model, which proposes that the results of making and production stem from the imposition of form onto matter, Simondon argues that products are formed through the simultaneous contraposition of form and matter (Simondon 2005, 41). Simondon believes that the preexisting model is too narrow and presupposes individuation, which itself is the process through which form and matter come into relation (Simondon 2005, 21). Therefore, Simondon argues that the hylomorphic model simplifies this complex process of making into the two innate ideas of ‘form’ imposed onto ‘matter,’ when in reality, the process of individuation is far more dynamic. More specifically, within the process of individuation, Simondon believes that form is ever emergent rather than fixed and given in advance. Therefore, Simondon argues that the hylomorphic model simplifies this complex process of making into the two innate ideas of ‘form’ imposed onto ‘matter,’ when in reality, the process of individuation is far more dynamic and grounded in information. He argues that information emerges in events, where form and matter coexist and coemerge in the process of individuation, rather than one forming the other (Simondon 2005, 36). Through shifting his perspective and rejecting the hylomorphic model, Simondon shifts his attention from being to becoming, where he explores what happens in between, rather than simply observing from the outside looking in. Through this perspective, he wants to approach organisms, objects, and even people as open, relational, incredibly dynamic things that are constantly in flux with their pre-individual fields.

How Ingold Uses the Quote

For Simondon, the creation of a brick illustrates how form emerges through interaction rather than from a predetermined design: the clay and mould converge in a “bringing together or unification of two ‘transformational half-chains’” (Ingold 2013, 25). This reflects the “first mixture”: the brick’s form emerges through the interaction of materials rather than from any pre-existing design. Simondon emphasizes that one cannot understand the individual in isolation from its environment: “one must grasp the being before it has been analyzed into individual and environment… one can neither explain the individual by the environment nor the environment by the individual”. This idea of the “first mixture” — that the individual and environment are inseparable in their formation — aligns closely with Ingold’s anthropology of making. Form emerges not from the imposition of a predetermined plan, but from the ongoing interaction between maker, materials, and environment. Making is a morphogenetic process — a dynamic flow of materials, forces, and energies in which the maker participates alongside the same forces that shape all living and nonliving things (Ingold 2013, 22). Both thinkers emphasize that materials are active participants in shaping outcomes rather than static matter. Ingold likens this idea to basket weaving, where shape arises from the interplay of willow branches, the weaver’s hands, wind, and bodily rhythm. All elements interact simultaneously from the start. Like the “first mixture,” the basket, maker, and environment emerge together, and only later can we consider the basket as a separate object or the maker as an individual agent. The maker follows the materials’ tendencies, contributing through movement, rhythm, and responsiveness. As Ingold notes, “in the field of forces, the form emerges as a more or less transitory equilibration” (Ingold 2013, 25), concluding, “perhaps bricks are not so different from baskets after all.” For Ingold, making is a longitudinal process, following materials as they grow and transform over time. The final form doesn’t exist independently of the materials or maker. Form arises through the continuous interaction of people, materials, and environment — a dynamic process in which individuals and their environments shape each other, reflecting Simondon’s insight.

Relevance to course

In our attached activity, we were able to roughly recreate Ingold’s students’ basket weaving experience through weaving yarn through handmade cardboard looms. We followed a tutorial on Instagram and immersed ourselves within the environment and process of tangibly making an object. We followed many of the same lessons Ingold described that his students did. Though we initially struggled with the set-up of our raw materials, the exceptionally separate pieces of yarn melded together naturally through the slow process of weaving and tightening – displaying the surprisingly recalcitrant properties of the material. We also ran into the problem of not knowing when to stop: despite the physical limitations of our loom, you could always tighten the previous stitches and make room for another row. Our deciding factor ended up being a lack of time, creating differences in our “finished” products. Throughout the making and reflection process, we discovered direct links between our activity, Ingold’s theories, and the critical term of body as defined by Wegenstein. Through expressing our learning in the tactile process of making an object with our hands, we were able to ground ourselves in nature and media creation more immersively than simply reading about it. By feeling the texture of the yarn and practicing the specific movements, we were able to connect our bodies to the bodies of the materials. Despite following the same tutorial, each of our final works depicted our own self-expression, and we were able to absorb knowledge through the medium of our body and learn from Ingold’s teaching through the experience of embodiment.

Citations:

Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art & Architecture. Routledge.

Mitchell, W. J. T., & Hansen, M. B. N. (Eds.). (2010). Critical Terms for Media Studies. University of Chicago Press. 

Simondon, G. (2020). Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (T. Adkins, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.  (Original work published 1964)

Simondon, G. (2012, December 8). Form & Matter: Gilbert Simondon’s critique of the hylomorphic scheme (Part 1). The Funambulist Magazine. Retrieved from https://thefunambulist.net/editorials/philosophy-form-matter-gilbert-simondons-critique-of-the-hylomorphic-scheme-part-1

Wegenstein, B. (2010). Body. In W. J. T. Mitchell & M. B. N. Hansen (Eds.), Critical Terms for Media Studies (pp. 19–34). University of Chicago Press.

Ela, Lorainne, Dea, Victoria

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Jacques Derrida and Tim Ingold: Making Through Blindness

Image of Jacques Derrida

Introduction

What does sight and hand inform us about making? Through Jacques Derrida’s own theories regarding our use of sight and hand, Ingold supports his own arguments while also challenging Derrida via his book Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins. Throughout this work, we will analyze how Derrida’s philosophies on sight (and its contrast with blindness) alongside the hand (and drawing with it) has been cited to articulate its importance in making as argued by Ingold.

Derrida’s Background

Derrida is a French philosopher whose works involve theories regarding the humanities, which we have seen references of in class through the language and writing chapters of Critical Terms for Media Studies. With his background in philosophy, he puts forward his thesis with terms such as “deconstruction,” where he analyzes the flawed nature of Western philosophy and viewing concepts in opposition (e.g. culture and nature, speech and writing, mind and body, etc.). This sort of “deconstruction” of seemingly oppositional ideas is what will inform Derrida’s arguments, as we will see in his analysis of “sight and blindness” as well as “drawing and the hand” (“Jacques Derrida”). 

Sight, Blindness, and Weeping

Derrida’s hypothesis of sight postulates that it is “always set on convincing you” and is the “grafting of one point of view onto another”(2). Through this hypothesis, the definitions of blindness and sight develop ambiguity. Sight is both what we believe to be true, and an imparting of our personal perspective onto another, influencing them with our interpretation. Derrida discusses the space of blind as one that conjugates the “tenses and times of memory”: foreseeing “there where they do not see, no longer see, or do not yet see”(5, 6). Ingold furthers this temporal approach to considering sight when he describes it as “an activity of seeing forward” and a way to stay one step ahead of the material (69).

While Derrida’s discussion of sight concerns itself more with the metaphysical, distinguishing between “believing [what one sees], and seeing between” and explaining that the root of skepsis lies in the eyes and visual perception, Ingold applies his concepts to the process of making (Derrida 2). Ingold discusses drawing as a way to “look back on lines already drawn” to open our eyes, effectively making ourselves the “master of truth… who sees and guides the other towards the spiritual light” as Derrida describes it (Ingold 131, Derrida 6).

Derrida’s study of blindness eventually expands to a discussion of the eye itself. He defines eyes as the essence of the man and, as Ingold cites, its ultimate destiny is “not to see but to weep”(Derrida 125, Ingold 111). As such, the eye simultaneously veils sight and reveals the truth of the eyes (Derrida 126). In essence, the eye’s truth and what they observe is revealed as the world is covered, allowing a person to properly digest what they have seen. 

Similar to how Ingold claims technology is what separates humans from animals, Derrida differentiates between us in that we are the only ones who weep as an emotional response (126). Through weeping, humans “go beyond seeing and knowing”, using our eyes in both functions of telling: we understand the world around us through sight, and can convey our emotions through weeping (Derrida 126). Though we can not effectively observe our surroundings and openly weep congruently, Derrida’s emphasis on this dual use for eyes opposes Ingold’s theories of the individuality of the hand. However, Ingold stresses that the hand is distinct as it combines both aspects of telling, effectively clarifying any argument potential.

Drawing and the Hand

In Memoirs of the Blind, Jacques Derrida argues that “drawing is blind” (2) and that the act of drawing is dependent on blindness. To Derrida, drawing is an anticipating act, predicting what is to come. He describes how the hand moves across a surface before the eye can register what is being inscribed. He sees this process as taking initiative or “to take (capere) in advance (ante)”(4). The moment in which the artist first makes the first trace (trait), they are opening the path to invention. This trace is neither visible nor predetermined by what is already present. Even if there’s a model in front of an artist, the outcome is not predetermined. As there’s always a gap between the subject and the drawing, no matter how similar the deception of the subject is, a distance always remains.

As someone draws, their hands move ahead of their sight, meaning that they cannot see the entire line until it unfolds on the page. He argues that drawing “escapes the field of vision”(45) and rejects spectacular objectivity, which is the realm of everything visible and knowable. Derrida critiques the West’s dependence on this spectacle, holding onto the idea that vision provides truth. Drawing lives outside of this spectacle, as it goes against the idea that sight is all-encompassing, as it’s not a reproduction of what’s seen, because it occurs outside of visibility. Derrida’s overarching argument is that drawing is a process of touch, memory, and invention that isn’t beholden to vision.

Building on Derrida’s work, Tim Ingold’s Making reinforces his argument that making is a process of discovery rather than something representative. He rethinks the relation between drawing and writing, emphasizing that both originate from the hand, which he says works to tell the stories of the world. The hand is active as it probes and caresses; these actions precede visions and representation. In accordance with Derrida, Ingold argues that a mark is not in the realm of visibility but a lived movement: the practice of making. To Derrida, vision is haunted by blindness, but Ingold sees this haunting as fundamental to creativity. He sees the separation of sight and drawing as something that hinders how intertwined touch, memory, and perception actually are.

Conclusion

As media theorists, both Ingold and Derrida pose crucial questions and ideas that pertain to our relationship with the media. Much like drawing, when we produce media, there is a sense of “blindness” where we are obfuscated by the process of production itself. The notion that creating as a process is seen in both Derrida and Ingold’s arguments, where we see them discuss products as an unfinished, ongoing process. Ingold uses Derrida’s work to reinforce his main argument that making is a correspondence between the maker and the material. Both scholars argue that making is not a process determined by preconceived notions of reality but rather a relation between body and material. However, Derrida highlights this through his philosophies on the hand and blindness, revealing that the artist “creates or makes” without full knowledge of what will be the outcome. Ingold builds on this perspective and focuses on materiality. He describes the lived experience of making and how the maker and material are constantly working with one another. Just with the artefacts and buildings that Ingold puts forth his analyses on, media, too, are unfinished products constantly being reshaped with what is unseen (blind) as well as the hands that create them under new contexts. We see this often with how media are constantly edited, adapted into different forms of media, and also recontextualized under new perspectives. As academics, understanding each medium, not as its own standalone finished project, but in a perpetual state of change, is what guides us and our studies in the media landscape.

Citations

Britannica Editors. “Jacques Derrida”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 Oct. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacques-Derrida. Accessed 17 October 2025.

Derrida, Jacques. Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins. University of Chicago Press, 1993. 

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2013. 

Written by:

Molly Kingsley, Christine Choi, Aminata Chipembere

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Dwelling: Roots of Life in Ingold’s Making

Growing Downward

A plant never rushes. It waits for the right moment — sunlight shifting through the air, a brief touch of rain — and then begins, quietly, to grow. Its roots grow downward, not to dominate the soil, but to become part of it. Above the ground, its leaves unfold to meet the wind, trembling but certain, aware that to stand upright one must first hold fast below. Observing a plant’s growth made us question what it really means to exist. Perhaps living isn’t about striving to move forward or reach higher, but learning how to maintain—with the ground, with others, and with the conditions that make life possible. 

A plant doesn’t stand apart from the world—it lives through it, shaped by what it touches and what touches it. Heidegger might call this “dwelling”: living in care and attention to what sustained us, being between earth and sky rather than above them. Ingold builds on this idea—he turns Heidegger’s notion of dwelling into something lived and practiced. In Making, Ingold writes about how knowing and creating are not detached acts of control but ongoing relationships with materials. We learn and make from the space between the earth and sky, where we actually live. Instead of being distant observers, we are part of the world’s unfolding. As he describes, when the traveller’s body merges with the “shimmering luminosity of the sky” and the “embrace of the damp earth,” earth and sky are no longer divided by the horizon but unified at the very center of being (Ingold 137). To “grow downward” is to understand this form of relationship—to see that we exist not by hovering above, but by rooting ourselves within.

Sorge: Turning Towards the World

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher whose work reshaped how we think about being itself. Raised in a Catholic family in Messkrich, he began studying theology before turning to philosophy under the influence of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology (Wrathall). Yet Heidegger soon moved beyond Husserl’s focus on consciousness. His work “Being and Time” marked this shift: rather than asking what beings are, Heidegger asked what it means to be.

At the center of Heidegger’s “Being and Time” lies the idea of the term “Dasein”, which is his preliminary explanation of human existence as constituted by our relationships to the practical and social contexts that give meaning to our actions (Wrathall). Yet this is never purely individual. Most of the time, we exist as part of the one, absorbed in everyday routines and social habits that pull us away from authentic awareness of our existence. Heidegger calls this withdrawal not an absence, but a reminder that being is never fully available; it always withholds itself, keeping us in a state of searching and care. From this tension comes sorge, or care—a way of being that turns us toward the world and others, responding to what continually reveals itself and then slips away.

The Mound

Ingold extensively utilizes the mound as a metaphor for his concept of the continuation of life. He resists the idea that life, like edifices, is built from the ground up. Instead, like the fluid accumulation of the mound, matter does not have a clear boundary of beginning and end—its very process of becoming is its reason for becoming. And human life, even though one may argue, ends at the decay of flesh, does not truly end as it transforms into layering, sedimentation, and decay (Ingold 77). Humans, as a “thing” and not an “object”, adhere to this principle. Ingold directly cites Heidgger to distinguish between “things” and “objects”, thus as to why “things” require unique interventions: “The object, he argued, is complete in itself, define by its confrontational ‘over-againstness’ -face to face or surface to surface- in relation to the setting in which it is placed” (85). Participation is key to the ongoing process of “things” on earth’s surface. Similar to the nature of the mound, Ingold’s experiment with the village houses demonstrated how dwelling required involvement and movement. Heidegger’s presumption enhances Ingold’s idea of dwelling as performance, “The spaces of dwelling are not already given, in the layout of the building, but are created in movement” (85). The moment of movement is the moment of gathering, and is the act of joining the mound rather than terminating the worlding of things.

The Thing 

In “The Thing”, Heidegger describes a “thing” not as a functional object but an instrument of gathering the fourfolds—a place where earth, sky, divinities, and mortals come into relation. A “thing”, for him, is not merely a tool or container. Instead it holds the world together through this act of gathering. Ingold picks on the earth and mortal aspects of this idea by inviting instances of lived experience. In his critique of the monument versus the the mound, Ingold claims that, “A cairn, for example, is just a pile of stones that grows as every traveller, passing by a particular place, adds a stone picked up along the way as a memento of the trip” (83). Essentially, the cairn embodies the earth (stones) and the mortal (humans adding stones), justifying Ingold’s belief that a “thing” exists beyond to be looked at. It exists by being in the moment of contact between movement and matter. It emerges in the very act of relation, in the meeting of weight, texture, and gesture.

Heidegger’s concept of the “thing” is vital because it shapes our understanding of Ingold’s theory of correspondence. Ingold doesn’t merely cite Heidegger–he reworks Heidegger’s thinking of the “thing” to a more sensory and material appraoch. He frames gathering into a process of mutual formation in which he coined as correspondence. As Ingold writes, “To touch it, or to observe it, is to bring the movements of our own being into close and affective correspondence with those of its constituent materials” (85). In this reimagining, correspondence is all established on the basis of the material and our movement, forming a dynamic flow of transduction–a continual exchange of forces that mutually transforms the maker and the material. In this sense, Ingold preserves Heidegger’s insight that being is relational but makes it tangible, where life itself is sustained through the harmony of making and response.

From Thought to Touch

Heidegger’s concept of dwelling is largely metaphysical, unlike the lived and sensory approach that Ingold pursued. Although Ingold inherits from Heidegger the belief that humans do not stand apart from the world but dwell within it (Heidegger 1971; Ingold 3), the poetics of the fourfolds cannot be fully defined but can only be evoked. Hence, to situate this Ingold turns dwelling into a lived process. For this reason, he doesn’t always cite Heidegger directly, and that absence is intentional. Ingold had already acknowledged Heidegger explicitly in earlier chapters, such as “The Materials of Life,” where he draws on The Thing to describe how touching and observing bring our being into correspondence with materials (21). Transitioning to the chapter “Round Mound and Earth Sky”, Heidegger’s influence has already been absorbed into the fabric of Ingold’s prose, as seen in his description of the earth as “not the solid and pre-existing substrate that the edifice builder takes it to be” but “rather the source of all life and growth” (77). That said, Ingold departs from Heidegger’s abstract meditation to ground dwelling in the immediacy of sensory experience. In the case where “buildings are part of the world, and the world will not stop still but ceaselessly unfolds along its innumerable paths of growth, decay and regeneration, regardless of the most concerted of human attempts to nail it down, or to cast it in fixed and final forms” (48), Heidegger would reflect the human impulse as an interruption of gathering, but Ingold would rather stress the ceaseless unfolding as the flow of material and life that is necessary of becoming.

Conclusion

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15) expresses a perennial truth about human life that it is rooted in care, not command. Modernity, however, teaches us that to live is to rise—to build higher, reach farther, and transcend. Cities embody this logic in glass and steel, lifting us above the very earth that sustains us. Ingold offers a resolute reversal: to live is to grow downward, to take root, to correspond. A plant’s growth is not an escape from the soil but a deepening within it, an act of grounding rather than ascent. He translates Heidegger’s metaphysics into lived experience: the sky is what allows things to breathe, and the earth is what lets them grow. To “grow downward,” then, is not to retreat but to recognize our place within the flow of life—to live with the world, not above it. Anthropology, in this sense, becomes the practice of rooting knowledge. To understand, then, is to return to the ground: not to possess it, but to dwell within it—to let thought take root where life already grows.

Works Cited

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2013. 

Wrathall, Mark. “Martin Heidegger.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 31 Jan. 2025, plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/#:~:text=Martin%20Heidegger%20was%20born%20on,at%20the%20University%20of%20Freiburg.

The Holy Bible: New International Version. Zondervan, 2011.

Cover art: “Antonio Mora on Instagram: ‘Plant Fashion’ En 2025: Arte, Estatuas, Disenos de Unas.” Pinterest, 8 Aug. 2025, www.pinterest.com/pin/26247610323734509/. 

By Gina Chang and Nicole Jiao

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Making in the Eco Chamber

“Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity.”

― Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco: A Library of the World is a documentary that delves into Italian literary critic and semiotician Umberto Eco’s life and his personal library, which houses over 30,000 volumes of novels and 1,500 rare and ancient books. Director Davide Ferrario discusses with Eco, conducts interviews with his family and friends, and retrieves archival footage of Eco to beautifully encapsulate Eco’s life through his love and passion for books and the exploration of the truth. The 80-minute film presents Eco’s library as a living archive that mediates the relationship between media and memory, providing insights into how media shapes thought, culture, and history. Expanding to the scope of this course, the film explores the importance of the distinction between material and digital media, semiotics, and the body. I will connect these concepts to Tim Ingold’s novel Making, specifically, with Ingold’s claim that media as living matter and his distinction between ‘objects’ versus ‘things’. I argue that Eco’s approach to media and memory through books parallels Ingold’s concept of making as a continuous process between the conscious and material world.

The film’s themes of media and material knowledge emerge most vividly through Eco’s private library, which serves as both a physical living archive and a conceptual framework for understanding his worldview. The library, which is a growing personal collection of Eco’s books, then becomes a symbol of a living system of knowledge, rather than a static collection of objects. The film strengthens this idea by presenting Eco’s notion of vegetal memory, which mediates memory and knowledge through paper and books. Eco claims, in his paper on vegetal memory, that libraries are ‘the most important way of keeping our collective wisdom’ (Eco, 1). For him, books and their mass presence through the space of a library become a physical thing that mediates memory, linking memory to material forms. This idea parallels Ingold’s argument that material form is flowing, not fixed. He claims that the material world and human thought are mediated through correspondences, where the flow of materials and the flow of consciousness are intertwined, where making becomes a process of mediation (Ingold, 21). For Eco, making comes in the form of curating books for his personal archive, where he engages thought and memory with the physicality of books. Ingold proposes that making is an embodied interaction that occurs before and during meaning is made (Ingold, 96). Eco mirrors Ingold’s claims as he physically turns the page of each book, engaging with it at every turn. Beyond completing the reading, he continues to engage with the material by keeping a collection of books. Here, the meaning of books changes before, during, and after the activity of reading the actual contents of the object. With embodied interaction with its material, as Eco refuses to put on gloves to preserve its material, rather letting it decay, breathe, and live in its environment, the books transform from a commodity to a physical vessel of memory and knowledge.

To further explore the library as a metaphor for collective knowledge, Eco’s fascination with semiotics exhibits many parallels with Ingold’s distinction between objects and things and their affordances. Eco connects semiotics, the study of signs as a means of meaning-making, back to vegetal memory, where every book is a sign whose contents reference other signs and histories. Through these signs and the curation of other signs through books, humans can form frameworks to understand the world. Because of this, Eco’s library transforms into a semiotic system that not only houses these vessels of signs and knowledge but also creates a network that connects books through categories and cross-referencing. Furthermore, Ingold’s interpretation of seeing things as things, rather than as objects, is extremely relevant in exploring how Eco engages with books through a semiotic lens.

Ingold quotes philosopher Martin Heidegger’s claim that objects are complete in themselves, where correspondence does not occur because it does not interact with the world and its surroundings (Ingold, 85). On the other hand, Ingold claims that things are with us as opposed to objects being against us. Things can be experienced in a way that corresponds with their surroundings, rather than merely witnessing or existing alongside an object. A thing is a dynamic gathering of material matter that engages with other things, such as people or the environment (Ingold, 85). Ingold concludes his claim by stating that things exist and persist because they leak, where materials interact with each other physically across the different surfaces they encounter. Through these types of leakages and interactions, things can be living and dynamic and possess a sort of bodily agency that can die, decay, or transform over time (Ingold, 95). With this distinction between ‘objects’ and ‘things,’ it is clear that Eco’s books are not static or to be read and stored once completed. Rather, his consciousness corresponds with the book’s materiality, and even goes beyond his personal interpretations of his texts when he connects different texts and shares his understanding with the public. As mentioned in the quote at the start of this post, Eco’s passion for books goes beyond viewing them as a mere object or commodity; rather, it affords him knowledge and understanding of the world around him. Through this ongoing dialogue between mind and material, Eco transforms reading into a living practise, one that blurs the boundaries between individual memory and the collective intelligence stored within his library.

Ultimately, Umberto Eco: A Library of the World reveals that knowledge is never static but is continually made and remade through our material and intellectual engagements with media. Through the lens that books are dynamic ‘things’ rather than ‘objects,’ the film presents Eco’s books as a living, constantly growing system of knowledge. A point in the film that struck me the most was the intimate moments of Eco physically interacting with his books. Sensory actions such as touching the covers or each page, smelling the books, or rearranging books in categories became systems and processes of thinking. This reminded me that reading is not just an intellectual activity, but also a tactile and relational practise. Reflecting on our course discussions, I found parallels with the Critical Terms chapter I read for my presentation, “Writing,” where theorist Andre Leroy-Gourhan emphasises graphism in writing. Specifically, how literacy is not only used as a means of communication but as a tool that links mind, body, and material. The film offers a powerful reminder that media are not passive containers of knowledge but active participants in the making of knowledge itself.

Works Cited

​​Eco, Umberto. (2022). Umberto Eco: A Library of the World [Film]. Directed by Davide Ferrario.

Eco, Umberto. “Vegetal and Mineral Memory: The Future of Books.” Academia.Edu, 21 June 2015, www.academia.edu/13152692/Vegetal_and_Mineral_Memory_The_Future_of_Books_by_Umberto_Eco. 

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2013.

Cover image from The Belcourt Theatre

Other

The Materials, The Readymade, and The Counterfeit: Inauthenticity of Objects According to Ingold and Eco

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“The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture” courtesy of The New Yorker.

Introduction

We tend to think of our objects as authored: whether they are made according to the drawing of a designer, the externalization of an artist’s emotions, or the disciplinary work of a scientist with a particle accelerator. Objects, as we have been studying, are a kind of media– the study of which is full of discussions around the auteur, authorship, and authorial intention versus audience perception. Both Tim Ingold and Umberto Eco question the assumption of authorship in object creation as a part of their scholarship. For Ingold, Chapter 2 of Making, “The materials of life”, sharply criticizes the hylomorphic model (aka, our understanding of objects as static forms born from a predestined image in the mind of a maker). For Eco, a semiotician, the idea of the counterfeit object relies on a complex ethical system for understanding what qualifies as a falsification. His understanding of objects in the essay “Untruths, Lies, Falsifications” (found in On the Shoulders of Giants), is that their authorship is fleeting and highly conditional. 

The Materials

At the beginning and the end of an object’s life cycle are materials. Ingold introduces a model in Making to help readers reframe their understanding of objects as final products, born from a design and static for all time. Instead, objects are mere “stoppage” points along a flow of materials, just as images are stoppage points along a flow of consciousness (20). The image and the object can correspond, Ingold says, but it is not one that determines the other. To illustrate this point, he gives us two salient examples of how objects transform from their presumed final state: one according to human intention, and the other according to natural forces.

“Householders might think of pots and pans as objects […] but for the dealer in scrap metal, they are lumps of material” (19). The process of regeneration and the value of objects and materials is here called into question. The notion of value in the object and its subsequent replications is also interesting to Eco, as I will explain later on. Human intention is seemingly both a force that informs an object’s creation, and also one that determines the object’s fraudulency. 

Secondly, Ingold provides an example of making as a process of growing and changing by describing the natural form-generating process: “The difference between a marble statue and a rock formation such as a stalagmite […] is not that one has been made and the other not. […O]nly this: that at some point in the formative history of this lump of marble, first a quarryman appeared on the scene who, with much force and with the assistance of hammers and wedges, wrested it from the bedrock, after which a sculptor set to work with a chisel in order, as he might put it, to release the form from the stone. But as every chip of the chisel contributes to the emergent form of the statue, so every drop of supersaturated solution from the roof of the cave contributes to the form of the stalagmite. When subsequently, the statue is worn down by rain, the form-generating process continues, but now without further human intervention” (21-22). 

The Readymade

The world of art and art history has taken major issue with this subject of form generation, in no way more obvious than in trying to define the “readymade object”. What happens when an artist takes something already composed from materials and puts it in a new context? Is this act of human intervention a form of making itself? To this question, Ingold might respond by asking an artist to describe their engagement with the materials in the work (in this case, the readymade object or objects, plus any other mediums used). “Even if the maker has a form in mind, it is not this form that creates the work. It is the engagement with materials”, he says. “Time and again, scholars have written as though to have a design for a thing, you already have the thing itself. Some versions of conceptual art and architecture have taken this reasoning to such an extreme that the thing itself becomes superfluous. It is but a representation – a derivative copy – of the design that preceded it (Frascari 1991: 93). If everything about a form is prefigured in the design, then why bother to make it at all?” (22). If the evolution of the object only exists in the mind of an artist or a viewer, has anything really been made at all?

The idea of originals and copies is exactly where Umberto Eco’s work comes in to expand Ingold’s ideas and consider what our current normative understanding of creation/ authorship versus copying/ counterfeit comes from. His work is also especially relevant to the art world, where collector’s items, originals, and fakes are fetishized and contentious. In particular, the passing of replica paintings for their originals has had unimaginable monetary and emotional costs. 

The Counterfeit

What is a counterfeit? “The counterfeiting of a pseudo-double lends itself to false identification that occurs when A (legitimate Author), in historical circum-stances t1, produces O (Original Object) while C (Counterfeiter) in historical  circumstances t2 produces CO (Counterfeit Object). But CO is not necessarily a forgery because C could have produced CO as an exercise or for fun” (183-4). Here Eco starts his argument by assuming the innocence of the counterfeiter. What really gets our goat, he argues, is how a third party– which he nicknames the Identifier– evaluates the original versus the copy. “A double is a physical token that possesses all the properties of another physical token, insofar as both have the pertinent features prescribed in an abstract type. […] Instead, we are dealing with pseudo-doubles when only one of the tokens of the type assumes, for one or more users, a particular value”(185). 

This may sound like a simple argument that explains how historical or sentimental value attached to the “original” version of a particular object is reflected in its cultural and/or monetary value. However, Eco’s argument then digs in and questions the fidelity of original works with the following paragraph:

“Sometimes C transforms the authentic object into a counterfeit version of itself. For example, unfaithful  restorations are carried  out on paintings or statues that transform the work, censor parts of the body, and break up a polyptych. Strictly speaking, those ancient  works  of  art  that  we  consider  originals  have  instead  been  transformed by the action of time or men—and have undergone amputations, restorations, alteration or loss of color. We need only think of the neoclassical ideal of a ‘white’ Hellenism, whereas the original temples and statues were multicolored. But, given that any material is subject to physical and chemical alterations from the very moment of creation, then every object should be seen as a permanent counterfeit of itself”(186-7).

Here is where I believe Ingold and Eco to be taking two different approaches towards the same issue. Ingold would say that a Greek sculpture is undergoing a continual process of growth as time and the elements wear away its colourful paint. Meanwhile, Eco would say that the image in our heads of an “original Greek sculpture” actually corresponds to a counterfeited version. The only difference between counterfeit like this and fraudulent counterfeit, he suggests, may be owed to the human intention behind the act of creating a copy or altering an original. 

Conclusion

“What happens if the authentic object either no longer exists, or has never existed– in any case, if it has never been seen by anyone?” Eco asks innocently, breaking his unending flow of evidence and reference (187). His argument suggests to us that the image of the original is actually ascribed such importance culturally and societally, that no matter how much the materials of an object flow– whether they are renovated and mended, or reduced to ruins and rubble– the image remains fixed at its “stoppage point”. 

Ingold details how we work through and make meaning from materials, and yet Eco supports a theory that we work through and make meaning from images. When our conscious experiences as a society join around these common images, perhaps we understand one another better through a shared culture. Both Ingold and Eco can be “correct” in their dialectical understandings of the object and the image, but who will help us to understand Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian, or photos animated with Snapchat AI? The questions of making, re-making, and counterfeiting– and what these processes might entail– feel equally if not more important to media studies today than discussing the death of the author. Their relevance to us both as to makers and consumers of media is exceptionally strong.

Works Cited

Eco, Umberto. “8. Untruths, Lies, Falsifications”. On the Shoulders of Giants, Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2019, pp. 170-195. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674242265-009

Ingold, Tim. “The Materials of Life.” Making, Routledge, New York, NY, 2013, pp. 17–31, https://www.taylorfrancis.com/reader/download/f3935efc-cf5e-4c85-ab70-2e61f46e8689/book/pdf 

Blog post written by Naomi Brown