Becomings and Ouroboros

Becomings

I came across a book in the library titled 'Becomings: Explorations of Time, Memory, and Futures' by Elizabeth Grosz. Time and memory I have been considering though my work since the beginning of the term however the future has escaped me so far.

"Determinism annihilates any future uncontained by the past and present" p.4 so here in the books introduction Grosz is highlighting that the everyday definition of time as a vector or arrow, pre-supposes that the future is inherently predictable in relation to the past/present.

In this section of the book on page 86 Grosz considers the 'glace' as the view of life in the present, without preconception, but pure unfiltered momentary viewing.

"Unlike any arrow, this shot (the glance) does not simply go forward to its target, following a one-way trajectory that, once completed, lapses into nonbeing or at least nonactivity. Instead, the glance loops back onto the subject who emitted it; it folds back on the subject, coils over onto this subject, falling back onto it. . . . The clearest case in point is glancing at oneself in the mirror. Here I start by looking out from myself; taking my glance with me outward, i send it before me into the mirror, where I see myself glancing at myself, catching myself in the act, as it were. No sooner does this happen, however, than my glanced-at glance returns to me and is absorbed by the very face that sent it out in the first place: it folds back over this face, rejoining it at its own surface, as if to acknowledge this face as its own progenitor. Yet the glance returns to me not simply as to the same self, but to a self augmented by its own looking "

In this describes a sort of duality with the present and the past, that the two unfold simultaneously. Bergson talked in his own terms about time and the mirror:

"Pure Memory is to perception that which the image appercieved behind the mirror is to the object placed before it. The object is touched as well as seen: it can act on us as we act on it; it is pregnant with possible actions, it is actual. The image is virtual and, although similar to the object, incapable of doing what the object does. Our actual existence, insofar as it unfolds in time. is thus doubled with a virtual existence, with an image in a mirror." from L'energie Spirituelle, by Bergson.

This takes me back to my considerations of Narcissus in a previous post HERE

The Ouroboros

The Ouroboros, The snake that devours its self, has appeared in may different cultures and has resembled through varying themes an illustration of unity. Here is a look at the symbol and its significance.

Here is another perspective that considers Ouroboros in relation to seemingly separate observations.

Like the snake the earth appears to be devoured and re summoned in its cycle of darkness and light.

Guido Cagnacci, Allegoria della vita umana, c.1650

The allegory of human life by Cagnacci uses the Ouroboros as a symbol in conjunction with the skull and flower representing creation and destruction, life and death, the hourglass symbolizing temporarily of human life.