An Anthropological Guide to the Art

and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

 Thinking in the World
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An Anthropological Guide to
the Art and Philosophy of
Mirror Gazing
Maria Danae Koukouti &
Lambros Malafouris
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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For Odysseus
vi
 Contents

Acknowledgements x

Image and imagination: A prolegomenon 1

1 About mirroring: An introduction 3

‘I’ see ‘me’ 3
Fooled by the mirror 6
Towards a comparative anthropology of mirror gazing 7
Patterns that connect 9
Book synopsis 10

Part 1 Dis-enchantment

2 The image thief – a profound madness 17

Inside the mirror 17
Images that do not travel 18
Liar, trickster, mime 21
Phantomachia 22
The terror of bilocation 24
Vanishing act 28

3 Beautiful scars 31
The gaze of the holy inquisition 31
A desire that can only look at itself 35
The mirroring of disgust 37
Resistance 39
In search of beauty/in defence of a scar 42

Part 2 Re-enchantment

4 Looking through the looking-glass 49

A world that goes the wrong way 49
viii Contents

Fabulous monsters 52
Animals are people 55
The gaze of imagination 57
Broken mirror 59

5 The other in the mirror 63

Masters and slaves 63
Mirror fiction 65
Erised 67
A portrait’s gaze 69
Living masks 73
This cannot be me 75

6 The gaze of the shaman 79

Mongolia: A land of permeable borders 79
The world at the other side of the mirror 81
Portal, weapon, shield 85
Daunting mirror 87
A dark glimpse 91
Hazy shapes and metaphors 93
Thinking dead 95
Lonely glass 98

Part 3 Hunters and Prey 101

7 The mirror trap 103

Self-hunting 103
Captured: Traps as mirrors and mirrors as traps 104
Mimicry in the land of the ‘soul hunters’ 110
Stories of transformation 114
Seducing Narcissus 118
Hunter’s beauty/the prey is in love 121
Predatory image 123
Soul exchange in Amazonia 124
Hunters and prey: The gaze of the prey 128
 Contents ix

8 How to look in the mirror 133

Transparent illusion 133
Healing 135
Phantom pain 136
Severed mirroring/a sickness of the gaze 138
Social mirrors 140
Body without organs 142
On seeing through 144
Metamorphoses: The gaze of the hunter 147

9 Epilogue 149

Notes 155
References 173
Index 183
 Acknowledgements

This book took many years to write. Not least because the connections that
defined its final shape were not even remotely visible at the beginning of our
endeavour. What we eventually discovered, in the process of writing this book, was
very different from what we had originally planned or imagined. On reflection, we
have been surprised by the range of perspectives, and the sources of intellectual
inspiration (both human and non-human) that have influenced our thinking.
Looking back, we can only be thankful to our editors Liza Thompson, Lucy
Russell and Jill Bennet. Many thanks especially to Mary Zournazi for her
unfailing support, good advice and immense patience. We have been also very
lucky to find ourselves in an environment – the University of Oxford – full
of enthusiastic people who have helped shape our thoughts and experiences
over the years. We owe a particular debt of gratitude to the following friends
and colleagues for reading and commenting on various chapters and passing
on some excellent ideas: Miranda Creswell, Rory Carnegie, David Van Oss,
Richard Briant and Chris Gosden. Fred Coolidge deserves very special thanks
for reading the final draft in its entirety and providing extensive comments
and constructive criticism that helped increase the clarity of our arguments.
Of course, we are responsible for all remaining errors or inconsistencies. We
would like to thank also Katerina Fotopoulou and Carey Jewitt for many and
varied conversations on these and other topics. We are also very grateful to
Francesco Parisi and the other participants of the conference Mediating Material
Engagement in Messina where Maria Danae Koukouti presented a precis of the
book. We have benefited greatly also from discussions with Claudio Paolucci.
Many institutions have contributed to the book. A significant part of Lambros
Malafouris’ work on this book was supported by the John Templeton Foundation
and the Keble College Small Research Grant. Also since 2018 our work in Oxford
has been funded by the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant,
HANDMADE (No 771997) awarded to Lambros Malafouris. We are immensely
grateful to the above Institutions for their support.
Above all else we thank our son Odysseus, who has grown to a young adult over
the years during which the book were written, for his love and understanding.
 Image and imagination: A prolegomenon

Let’s start with something imaginary: a mirror placed in a clearing in the

middle of a forest. It stands upwards placed on the ground. The mirror is
unframed. The surrounding forest is feral. Suddenly, a deer appears from
an opening. It runs for a while, then it stops. It looks back at the edge of the
forest, then looks around. It gives a final glance at the trees before turning
its gaze towards the middle of the forest where the mirror stands. Can the
deer see the mirror? Let’s assume that it does. What does the deer see inside
the mirror? We can hardly imagine. To find out we must be patient. We must
wait for the deer to come closer and look for itself. We watch the deer as
it moves hesitantly. It now stands in front of the mirror looking at its own
reflection. What can it possibly see or discover? In our eyes, the mirror image
of the deer signifies an absence: the absence of the deer’s physical body that
stands by the mirror, facing it. In the eyes of the deer, however, what for us
is an absence may well be a presence: the presence of another deer living
behind the mirror. In this imaginary plot, we are all (the deer, us, the mirror,
the mirror image, the forest, the middle) caught up in a game of mimesis,
of presences and absences, of living bodies and lifeless reflections. Maybe
without knowing it, we have anticipated from the start, even hoped, that the
deer will fall for the mirror we placed in the middle of the forest. What we
didn’t expect, imagine or wish for is that this mimetic transaction may well
bring about the death of the deer. More often than not, whether the plot is
imagined or real, the mirror is a hunter, hiding in the middle of the forest, in
between self and other. The strangest, but also interesting, things in human
life happen in the ‘middle’. Perhaps those in-between happenings can also be
understood as relationships between hunters and prey. These are primarily
mimetic relationships that involve a participatory logic, that is, a logic that
2 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

connects. Naturally, hunter and prey relationships embody a killing dialogue

that inevitably leads both hunter and prey to self-identification. Captured
in the representational distance and capitalist ethos of modern societies, we
find it hard to think along those connective lines. We have lost our ability
to think in sympathetic terms. We have forgotten the language of traces and
trails, and know very little of hunters and prey. Yet, our new forests are full
of boundary objects and mimetic devices that if touched in the right way can
help us remember and reclaim our lost hunting skills. In this book we set out
to follow one of those objects: we know it as the mirror.
 1

About mirroring: An introduction

‘I’ see ‘me’

This book started with the imaginary and must turn now to the ordinary. We
take that most readers know what it is like to look in the mirror and assume
that, under normal conditions, one is able to recognize one’s own image in it.
Presumably, we know much less about mirror images, their modes of being
or the impact they may have on our lives. Nevertheless, we seem confident
about the use we can make of this object of ‘perpetual fascination’ and
everyday magic.1 Indeed, once you get to know it and come to trust its surface,
the mirror is a self-explanatory device. It attracts your gaze and performs its
mimetic function (what we call ‘mirroring’),2 asking nothing in return. You
don’t need to know why or how it works, and you don’t need to do anything to
make it work; it simply does. In fact, it works so well that even other species
can use it (if they are offered the chance).
However, as it is often the case with most mimetic creatures, natural or
artificial, simplicity is misleading. Mirrors do more than mirroring. More
than just presenting our image (a body or a face), they actively influence
our experience of selfhood (the consciousness of being that body or that
face). This potent capacity of the mirror to act as a powerful device of self-
identification will be the main focus of this book. We take the mirror as an
opportunity to rethink the question of selfhood. Our stated objective also
reveals something of our major assumptions: we all have a self somewhere
even if that self is transitional, illusory and incomplete. Self is not a stable
entity but a multifaceted process. We take that mirror gazing constitutes
such a process or technique of self-becoming. Expressed by way of a single
overarching objective, our aim is to provide a comparative anthropological
4 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

enquiry of what it is to look and find a self in the mirror. We dub this the art
of mirror self-identification: it can be conceived as a way of knowing things
(episteme) as much as a way of doing things (techné).
The sceptic may object to these theoretical complications: ‘Thanks but last
time I looked there was nothing especially difficult or interesting about finding
myself in the mirror – especially early in the morning.’ It is very hard to think
of the mirror as anything other than a piece of reflecting glass. You see, we
are used to look at the world in a certain way. But it is exactly that degree of
familiarity that costs us its magic and promise. Indeed, what we often fail to
realize is that looking at oneself in the mirror and finding oneself in the mirror
are two quite different things. One would think that, especially nowadays,
living in an environment surrounded by mirroring surfaces of all sorts, and
given the time we spend in front of the mirror, humans would be experts in
mirror gazing. Nothing is further from the truth. The more used we are to
something, the less likely we are to be enchanted or enlightened by it. The art
of mirror self-identification, ancient as it may be, is almost becoming obsolete.
Not only do we seem incapable of using the mirror as a tool for the self, we
also often suffer from various delusional beliefs about what one’s reflection in
the mirror might be and what it does. As developmental psychologist Philippe
Rochat explains, the ‘[m]irror reflection of the self is paradoxical in the sense
that what is seen in the mirror is the self as another person’.3 Our own face
often becomes a stranger; a stranger’s face becomes the ‘I’.
What can we learn about the self by taking a different, more critical
anthropological stance towards the mirror? If the mirror is an active
participant in our daily routines of self-identification (not just mimicking but
also constructing and dictating personal narratives), what is it that gives the
mirror this power or agency? How does it do it?
Trying to answer those questions, one of the main arguments of this book will
be that looking at one’s face in the mirror and finding one’s self in the mirror are two
processes related but distinctive, both with profound psychological consequences.
The former process, the ability to identify one’s own image in a mirror, requires no
special effort or training. All it takes is having a mirror and looking at it. At first
the untrained eye may be bedazzled with the dissonant spectacle – sometimes
terrified by the sight of its mirror image.4 But soon habit will ease our anxiety,
turning illusion into reality. The second process, finding one’s self in the mirror, is
 About Mirroring 5

more complicated: it presupposes knowing how to look in it. The sufferings and
the pleasures that come with this process outlast the period of initial exposure.
The quest of self-knowledge through the looking-glass is very different from the
visual process of identifying a face or a body in the mirror. Finding our self in the
mirror is a skill that demands great effort and care. This skill is also of a different
order from the so-called mirror self-recognition test discussed in the relevant
experiments with small children and non-human animals.5 Self-recognition in
those experiments speaks of the agency of the mirror and exposes the affordances
(in Gibson’s6 sense of interactive possibilities) of this mimetic device. Still, to find
one’s self in the mirror presents us altogether with a different challenge.
From an optics perspective, there is nothing mysterious in the way a
polished surface reflects rays of light showing us how we look. The same cannot
be argued, however, from an anthropological perspective concerned with the
phenomenology (what is it like) and cognitive ecology of mirroring. When
unnoticed and unexamined the mirroring is transparent. It is the moment we
start thinking about it that it becomes a problem. What does the mirroring
do? What is it made of? What happens when ‘I’ see ‘me’ inside the mirror?
Once we raise those questions, the mirroring is transformed from a mundane
experience into a meshwork of socio-political and material considerations
about what exactly happens when the human body, or selective parts of that
body (in particular the face), becomes the centre of visual attention. Suddenly,
the mirror image can no longer be taken for granted; it is now a source of
epistemic enchantment and confusion/dissonance.
The mirroring is enchanting because, quite ‘un-naturally’, it allows the eye to
perform a function deemed useless by natural selection, that is, to gaze at one’s
own face. Our eyes stare at our staring eyes. To look at our face in the mirror
is to gaze directly at that part of the human body that we are not supposed to
see, even though it is probably the part we associate with human subjectivity
more than any other. Perhaps this explains why the mirroring radiates a
sense of awkwardness and law-breaking: we are no longer blind to the ‘eye’
of the ‘I’. Even if, as Ronald Barthes7 rightly observes for the photographic
image, the old ‘madness’ inherited in autoscopy (the experience of seeing one’s
body in extrapersonal space) has probably, in our times, been forgotten, the
momentary illusion, the split between ‘I’ and ‘me’ that comes with mirroring,
remains still. So, we may also say that the mirroring is confusing because it
6 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

is an illusion that cannot lie: on the one hand, what we see in the mirror is
nothing but a phantom image of our body standing against the background
of an impenetrable shiny surface. But on the other hand, as the semiotician
Umberto Eco observes, ‘[o]nce we have acknowledged that what we perceive
is a mirror image, we always begin from the principle that the mirror “tells the
truth”’.8
Contrary to what Eco’s semiotic treatment of the mirror appears to
recommend, however, one of the central themes of this book will be that
mirrors are not to be trusted. Mirroring, like any other form of re-presentation,
is never innocent. Unfailingly, the mirror will try to play its usual tricks on us –
to enthral us, to mesmerize us.

Fooled by the mirror

Let’s try a simple experiment which we borrow from art historian Ernst
Gombrich. Next time you happen to look at the fogged-up mirror of your
bathroom, circle the outline of your head with your finger.9 Then come closer
and measure the length of the outline you have just produced. Strange, isn’t it?
Repeat the experiment as many times as you wish from whatever distance. The
result will be the same: the length of the outline of your reflected head is actually
half the size of your real head. Surprised? If you are, it is because you, like anyone
else, share an unexamined and largely automatic conviction: the mirror always
speaks the truth; therefore, it presents real-size reflections. Those of you who
tried our experiment now know that this conviction is clearly wrong: an illusion.
So what? Surely, one might think, the world of physical phenomena is full
of perceptual illusions of one sort or another. True, but there is a darker side in
all this, which often passes unattended. Let us explain. There is a paradox: only
a few lines above, it was revealed to you for the first time – at least to those of
you unfamiliar with Gombrich’s experiment – that all your life you have been
fooled by the mirror. Still – and this is where the paradox lies – despite the
extent of this treachery, none of you felt the slightest concern or worry. Should
one worry?
Indeed, why should one care about a mere mirror illusion? It’s not that
you’ve seen a ghost or someone else’s face in the mirror or that you tried to get
 About Mirroring 7

inside the mirror to touch the reflected face behind its surface.10 No, nothing
of this radical sort: what you see is simply smaller than you think. No harm
is done. Besides, we are rational, so-called sapient creatures and presumably
now that the illusion has been revealed our superintelligence can be fooled
no more. Right? Let’s find out. Turn your glance towards the mirror and look
at your face once more: do you see your mirror face as being half the size of
your real face? Obviously, the answer is no. How would that be possible? The
psychology of perception has an easy reply: one needs only to realize that the
mirror is always located halfway between oneself and our own virtual image.11
Still, the fact that our image is constantly half the physical size independently
of how far we are from the mirror is counterintuitive.
We are all willing to accept that things are not always what they seem. But
the reason we can accept this undeniable fact light-heartedly is because of our
certainty that knowing our illusions we overcome them. We are certain, in
other words, that the logical power of our rational thinking is stronger and, in
the end, will prevail and protect us. Unfortunately, this is not what’s happening.
In fact, it is often the other way around. Maybe then, more important than
asking why people stubbornly refuse to see the real size of their faces on the
mirror’s surface is to ask what else do we fail to notice? We propose that this
question is quintessentially anthropological (in both the ethnographic and the
philosophical sense of the word). And, as it happens with questions of that
kind, they usually demand not just to learn but also to unlearn several things
we usually take for granted.

Towards a comparative anthropology of mirror gazing

Analytically speaking, this book can be described as a comparative

philosophical anthropology of mirror gazing. We call our approach in
this book anthropological not because we want to embark on a detailed
ethnographic study or provide a comprehensive coverage of the relevant
literature on mirrors. Rather, our intent is critical and comparative. We
adopt an anthropological approach primarily because we want to disturb and
estrange the familiar so that new connections and patterns of juxtaposition
may emerge. Technically, we approach mirroring as a visual mode of material
8 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

engagement.12 We are interested to explore how the mirror affects human

perception, modes of attention and self-transformation. Indeed, the moment
we are exposed to our mirror image we become something else. We insist on
integrating ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’ because this integration is the best recipe
for effecting and understanding this self-transformation. This integration of
thought and action also provides the primary stuff or ingredients for a good
relational ontology.
Recognizably, putting the right ontological ingredients together at the right
time is a difficult task. For this to happen, you need a manual. This book can
also be seen as a manual, albeit, of an unusual comparative sort. We understand
that speaking of a comparative manual may sound as a contradiction in terms.
Manuals, like maps, are meant to be unambiguous and universally applicable.
The language of instructions might differ, but the process described must be
identical. Yet, a distinctive feature of anthropological enquiry can be seen in the
way it reveals the constant tension between similarity and difference as it can
be observed in various forms of human biosocial becoming.13 The practice of
mirror gazing is not an exception. Mirror self-identification is an acquired skill,
something you learn as a child growing up in a particular historical situation.
This is why we propose that the art of mirror gazing involves a great deal of
unlearning. Take for instance our shared conviction that the mirror is a solid
reflective surface – rather than a forward extension of space. This conviction
demands and predisposes us to look ‘at’ the mirror rather than ‘through’ it.
In our world there is nothing to grab and reach for other than the mirror’s
cool surface. But what would happen if we were instead to look ‘through’ the
mirror as if it was transparent? Taking such a step requires a perspectival
understanding of the world, which allows for ontological multiplicity. That is,
the possibility that there is more than a single reality to see inside the mirror,
more than one world to navigate, more than a single story to tell. Talk about
ontologies is increasingly fashionable among philosophers and anthropologists
these days. We will not take issue with the theoretical discussions and debates
surrounding ‘new materialisms’14 and ‘ontological turn’.15 Rather, we use
the term ‘ontology’ in a very basic sense, denoting a quintessential form of
comparative anthropological enquiry that aims to expose, adding resistance and
friction, the reality (what it is that matters) of certain transparent phenomena
that may otherwise pass unnoticed or be mischaracterized as elusive or merely
 About Mirroring 9

imaginary. We are interested to understand how the mirror matters16 and to

illustrate some of the multiple ways by which the mirror comes to matter. The
task is more difficult than what it might seem: as we will see in the following
chapters, the mirror will prove to be a profoundly unsettling and unstable piece
of vital materiality.17

Patterns that connect

Tackling this ontological pluralism of looking in the mirror, this book will
set out a creative juxtaposition of stories about the life of the mirror, that
is, stories of mirroring and mirror gazing. We take inspiration about how
to build our stories from Gregory Bateson’s thesis of connectedness. In
this context, a ‘story’ is defined as a ‘little knot or complex of that species
of connectedness which we call relevance’, and following Bateson we
will assume ‘that any A is relevant to any B if both A and B are parts or
components of the same “story”’.18 Tim Ingold is another anthropologist
who used the metaphor of the knot to describe the creative forces of life.19
The stories we compile in the following chapters aim at providing exactly
such a ‘pattern that connects’,20 not in the linear sense of causality, but in
the sense described by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as rhizomatic.21
Rhizomatic connections, like grabgrass, are growing in all directions, with
no beginnings and endings. Our stories of mirror gazing are a species of
process ontology, they live in the ‘middle’. In that sense, they do not serve a
taxonomic or classificatory function; rather, the aim is to highlight possible
patterns or pathways of connectivity. As Tim Ingold points out, ‘stories
always, and inevitably, draw together what classifications split apart’.22
To assemble and narrate stories of mirroring in a manner that respects and
highlights their ontological proximity and multiplicity is no doubt a difficult
task that demands delicate use of metaphor, comparison and estrangement.
Metaphor will allow us to conceptualize the unfamiliar through the familiar.
Comparison will permit us to re-conceptualize two familiar things in the light
of each other. Estrangement will be used to turn the familiar into unfamiliar,
and then to resituate the unfamiliar at the very heart of our ordinary habitual
life.
10 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

In this book, the metaphor that perhaps best exemplifies the above is that of
the mirror as trap: we think of mirroring on a par with hunting. The mimetic
exchange assumes the relation between hunter and prey. This metaphor, more
than just being a ‘metaphor’, takes us literally into the realm of the non-human,
exemplified in this book in the image of a deer. The deer has been invited to
walk freely through the pages of our book. It has already made a brief and
shy appearance at the very beginning, looking inside the frameless mirror we
set for it in the middle of a forest. It returns again many times in different
contexts, teaching us all we need to know about hunting. The deer allows us
to confront the gaze of the prey. Mirroring is the essence of this confrontation.
By mirroring the deer you become the deer. The hunter is turned into prey;
the prey becomes the hunter. Highlighting this transformation allows us to
reclaim the lost connection between animal and human gaze in the face of
victimization. The borders between self and other blur as we finally adopt the
animal’s gaze. We turn our gaze back at the mirror, but now we have blood on
our hands.

Book synopsis

This book is not a history of the mirror as a thing. It is not an ethnography

‘of ’ mirror-things either. Rather, it is an anthropological experiment in
comparative thinging23. That is, we adopt an anthropological stance and use
it to expose some hidden aspects of our everyday thinking with, through
and about things – specifically, mirror-things. This emphasis on mirroring
as thinging is crucial for the stories we plan to narrate. The main reason is
the following: whereas any language can be used to obscure the inadequacy
of its concepts and categories, thinging does exactly the opposite: it leaves us
conceptually exposed, anxious and insecure.
Important to note also is that although approaching our subject matter
we have adopted a critical anthropological stance, we have also avoided to
prioritize one disciplinary perspective over the others. Instead, we have
sought to represent and discuss those aspects of mirror gazing that we felt
have cross-cultural and comparative value in our attempt to expose some
hidden dimensions of mirror gazing. Some of the topics we touch upon
 About Mirroring 11

in the different chapters, deliberately fragmented, have a long tradition of

independent scholarship that would have been impossible to summarize.
We choose instead to focus on a small number of works that influenced our
thinking and helped in the weaving of our argument combining ethnography,
philosophy and storytelling, knowing that some readers will be disappointed
to see that important works may receive only passing mention or even none
at all.
The first two chapters aim to explore the enigmatic, passionate, sometimes
even obsessive, relationship with our mirrored-self. In Chapter 2 we ask what
exactly is the mirroring? How does it claim our attention? What about it is unique
when compared with other media of self-presentation and re-presentation? We
try to address those questions comparing self-mirroring to other traditional
forms of self-imaging and examining its distinctive qualities of movement and
mimicry. A common fallacy about mirrors is to think that they simply hang on
the wall.
In Chapter 3 we argue that there is no such thing as a free-standing
mirror. Mirrors, we argue, are by definition hand-held objects: our social and
historical situation holds the mirror and determines the angle and intensity
of light and reflection. As many people know from experience, mirror gazing
can turn into a diminishing, abusing affair. This chapter sets out to explore
the dark side of the mirror. The punitive mirror gaze of a body fragmented
and commodified against the magnifying distorted glass of consumerism and
mass propaganda. Can we escape this parody of looking that the advertising
industry promotes and imposes on our self-image – always content, forever
youthful and eternally energetic? We propose an act of resistance.
In Chapters 4 and 5 we delve into the realm of imagination as expressed in
literature, art and popular culture around the world, seeking to reveal some
underlying patterns in the human experience and representation of staring
into the looking-glass. How do mirrors ‘reflect’ our imagination? What is it
about mirrors that make people everywhere to attribute, almost instinctively,
dangerous qualities to them? We propose there is more to the literary mirror
than mere imaginings. We follow Alice in her famous journey through the
looking-glass to discover a universe of vital materialism and perspectival
qualities: from thinking chess pieces and flowers to talking animals and things,
the world is inhabited by different persons, human and non-human, all of
12 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

whom seem to have sentience and agency, as well as a distinctive perspective

for connecting to each other and for making sense of the world. What we dare
is a bridge – a connective line between fantasy and the enthralling multiplicity
of human existence. We do so in order to inhabit as many realities as possible:
to step through the looking-glass ourselves. The mirror facilitates us to walk
that line by becoming misty and transparent: a mirror one can walk through.
What happens when a ‘fictional’ and a ‘real’ world mirror each other?
Away from fantasy and into the magic of the real, Chapter 6 is dedicated
to the mirrors of Mongolia, a place where, surprisingly, the mirror’s purpose
is not to be looked at. To the Buryat of Eastern Mongolia mirrors are not just
uncanny: they absorb things. Mongolian household mirrors are depositories
of past events (like quarrels or a death in the family), which might later leak
into the future with grim consequences. That is why mirrors often remain
concealed and young children are prohibited to look in them. Drawing on the
work of anthropologist Caroline Humphrey,24 we focus on a special object, the
shamanic mirror, the ‘toli’: a magical vessel of the dead, a light flashing weapon
and a living thing with a will of its own. The shamanic mirror has the ability
to move and affect lives, to bring madness, to destroy or reveal psychic energy.
How is that possible? We approach the shamanic mirror with care and gaze to
its other side where important lessons about what a mirror image is and does
can be learned.
This brings us to the last two chapters where the art or skill of mirror self-
identification is fully exposed. In Chapter 7 we ask the reader to think of the
mirror as a hunting weapon, more specifically, a trap of a rather peculiar
perspectival sort. Traps are usually designed to catch particular animals. The
more specialized the trap, the more effective it is.25 The same applies to the
mirror. What kind of creatures then a mirror-trap is designed to catch? We
suggest that mirror-traps are especially effective with creatures of the self-
conscious kind. Every trap signifies a basic need. In the case of the mirror
the need is not for food but for self-knowledge. So, how can we tell hunter
from prey? To answer that and to better explain the idea of the mirror as trap
we follow the Siberian Yukaghirs.26 They teach us the art of transformative
mimicry. We watch them as they disguise themselves to mirror their prey,
wear their fur, mimic their moves and become the animals’ mirror image. It
is a game of sexual seduction. Extending further our hunting metaphor and
 About Mirroring 13

the idea of the mirror as trap, in the final chapter of the book (Chapter 8) we
abandon the gaze of the prey and adopt the gaze of the hunter. We discuss when
and how the mirror hurts and come to recognize a ‘phantom pain’: that of the
absent and perfect mirroring we fail to find in the looking-glass. It becomes
apparent that, chasing an imaginary and ideal mirrored-self, we surrender the
ownership of our bodies. We become, in our minds, amputees. We succumb,
as victims, to a narrative of blame. Can we reclaim the ownership of our body?
Can we balance the need of owning our body and lives with the constant
demand to circulate self-images? We end our journey, perhaps unexpectedly,
in psychopathology. The mirror, apart from inflicting pain, can also have a
therapeutic effect. Is there a healing mirror? It all depends on how you look at
it. The gaze of the hunter is an invitation to see the mirror’s enchantment and
not just its glass: to find oneself in the mirror but also in the mirror’s depths.
14
 Part One

Dis-enchantment
16
 2

The image thief – a profound madness

Inside the mirror

What’s in the mirror? Rarely, if ever, we ask that question. Our mirrored
reflection is taken for granted. That’s hardly surprising, considering how easily
we can all obtain one. We have overcome any initial fear, and we have forgotten
the anxiety and perceptual ambiguity we had to suffer, as young children,
before we finally succeeded to recognize our self in the mirror for the first
time. As adults, although we continue to spend an enormous amount of time
looking at the mirror, we rarely bother to think or learn anything from it. As
a result, the true enormity of the phenomenological and semiotic challenges
that mirroring embodies escapes us. Our gaze stops at the mirror’s surface.
Implicitly, we also assume that mirror gazing and the various questions of self-
imaging that it raises are easily accountable, by means of basic science; no need
to ponder on what it is like to see yourself in the mirror. Few of us know what
this exact scientific account of mirroring might be, but we trust that there is
one, and that it is well understood. If we don’t know exactly how and why the
mirror works is not because we cannot find the answer to those questions;
rather, it is because we do not need to know the answers. The mirror is doing
its work regardless. All we need to understand the workings of the mirror is a
period of habituation: the opportunity to spend some time with the looking-
glass and to learn about its properties by actually engaging with it.
This kind of habituation, and the education of perception that comes with
it, is common experience for the modern person. It is not an experience
peculiar to mirror gazing but a broader feature of our engagement with all
kind of images and forms of imaging. The disenchantment of imaging that
characterizes our modern ecology of seeing is a relatively recent phenomenon
18 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

in human history. As with any other historical synergy of mind and matter
(enchanting or disenchanting), it brings about a peculiar set of constraints
for looking at and making sense of the world. In the case of mirroring there
are two important constraints at work: first, a subject–object separation that
reiterates a false dilemma between reality and appearance, and second, a sense
of control of the subject over the object that reiterates an illusion of agency. A
mirror cannot mirror anything before a subject is able and willing to identify
its reflection, or the reflection of some other object, in it. There can be no
mirror image in the absence of a perceiving subject. Yet, a peculiarity of the
mirror is that the subject gazing at the mirror and the object inside the mirror
are one. This semiotic conflation, for as long as it lasts, blurs, if not cancels
entirely, the distance between subject and object and creates a vacuum of
agency that needs to be filled.
We have learned to think of ourselves as agents who have mastery and
control over their mirror image. In reality, things tend to be more complicated
than that. This should come as no surprise. We have never been ‘the masters
of our images, but rather in a sense at their mercy’, as the historian of art Hans
Belting points out.1 This basic premise, namely, that ‘it is in fact the images
that are in control’ we believe applies also in the case of the mirror image. How
can this be? How can it be that a mirror image that appears leading the life of
a shadow can ever exert any kind of control on us? To answer that question,
we need to understand better the cognitive life of the mirror image,2 that is, we
need to understand what are the distinctive qualities of mirroring as a form of
self-imaging. This would be the major aim of this chapter.

Images that do not travel

Where should we start to examine what kind of image dwells inside the mirror?
The question becomes acute once we identify with the help of Umberto Eco
one of its peculiar characteristics: ‘As long as I look at it, it gives me back my
facial features, but if I mailed a mirror which I have long looked at to my
beloved, so that she may remember my looks, she could not see me (and would
instead see herself)’3 (Eco 1984, 211). It is with this peculiarity of mirroring
that we start. Mirror images do not travel; only mirrors do. This does not mean
 The Image Thief 19

that mirror images stay still. Quite the contrary, they move in perfect temporal
contingency with our own bodily movements. As long as we stay in front of
the looking-glass, the mirroring stays with us. The moment we move away
from the mirror the mirroring disappears. Paradoxically, in spite of all the
movement, our mirrored body eventually vanishes without leaving any visible
trace on the mirror’s surface. No trace, no memory. Did you ever remember
a mirroring? We remember photographs, portraits, videos, even images we
saw in our dreams, but we don’t seem to recall any specific encounters with
our specular image. The mirror image is slippery; it does not attach itself to
memory.
The mirror image has no memory; it is not memory either. Why is that?
There are many reasons, as we will have the chance to discuss later on and
in the chapters to follow. One reason especially relevant to our immediate
concerns is the following: unlike the products of other mimetic machines
and media – be it photography, video, painting – our mirrored reflection is
not a thing created – not at least in the common sense of creativity that we
associate with form-making. A self-portrait, to give one obvious example, will
take time, effort and skill. Our mirror image usually involves nothing of that.
There is no complex intentionality or elaborate act of creation; there is only
light and a humble piece of glass. The mirror images that occur on the mirror’s
surface are not made and do not change. Unlike other images they cannot
be classified according to period, convention, technique or style. Mirror
images do not have a history and cannot be subject of iconographic analysis
or critique. They cannot be destroyed or become the object of iconoclastic
polemics. Mirror images have form but no prescribed aesthetic; they have
visual content but no meaning. Lacking a tangible, physical presence also
means that the mirror image cannot be dated, exhibited, shared. Viewing
our idol in the mirror is a transient and lonely experience. What’s more,
the mirroring cannot migrate to another medium; it will not be printed or
broadcasted.
The mirror image provides an unmediated visual copy of what it represents.
It signifies a natural occurrence. Specifically, the mirror offers a meeting place
where two occurrences, that of our living body (the image referent) and that of
our mirrored body (the mirror image), momentarily intertwine. One peculiar
characteristic of this meeting between the mirror image and its referent is that
20 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

unlike other signifying relations it is based on synchronicity and co-presence.

The referent (our body) must be present for the mirror image to occur.
Indeed, one of ‘the most striking things about a mirror is the perfect temporal
contingency between the viewing individual’s movements and those of the
reflection’.4 Unlike conventional signs and images there cannot be mirror image
in the absence of its causative referent. Our body reflected in the mirror is the
product of theft or abduction. We may construct the mirror, and we may cause
our mirroring by situating our body in front of the mirror and by turning our
gaze to it, but the mirroring itself is not affected by human intention. Rather, it
is the other way around. We are caught by the mirror, drawn into it. Umberto
Eco also refers to the mirror as ‘theft’ of the image. He writes:

The fact that the mirror image is a most peculiar case of double and has
the traits of a unique case explains why mirrors inspired so much literature;
this virtual duplication of stimuli (which sometimes works as if there were a
duplication of both my body as an object and my body as a subject, splitting
and facing itself), this theft of an image, this unceasing temptation to believe
I am someone else, makes man’s experience with mirrors an absolutely
unique one, on the threshold between perception and signification.5

The self-contradictory character of the mirror image has always been something
of a paradox. The ambivalent ontology of the mirror image, being and at the
same time not-being, has been the main source of its enchantment as a mode of
representation. It is also why most people tacitly assume that mirroring is the
kind of imagery best described by optics rather than by aesthetics or semiotics.
From one particular point of view, the mirror image offers a paradigm case of
mimicry: trivial as it may be the image that we generate intentionally (standing
in front of our mirror) or unintentionally (passing by a shop’s window) is
accurate and alive as an image can be. From another point of view, the mirror
image appears the most elusive image of all: a phantom, leaving behind no
memory or any other material trace.
It appears then that our engagement with the mirror, and the product of
this engagement, eludes our familiar taxonomies and categories. Apparently,
the mirroring lacks the usual traits we associate with other images and types
of imagery. Indeed, if images, as William Mitchell notes, are ‘enigmas … prison
houses which lock the understanding away from the world’,6 then the mirroring
 The Image Thief 21

is even more so. How are we to get a better sense of the mirroring in the face
of its distinctive qualities? It seems it’s not enough to ask just what is it. Best
if we ask also: what does it ‘do’? How does it ‘behave’? It is on the social and
psychological levels that mirrors reveal their true power. The moment we turn
our gaze at their surface mirrors become instruments of an existential sort.
Allowing us to gaze at the reflected image of ourselves, mirrors are turned into
what the philosopher Michel Foucault describes as technologies of the self.7 We
propose there are at least three distinctive ways by which the mirror-gazing
experience achieves its impact: by lying to us, by mimicking our actions and by
clinging on stubbornly to a sort of pre-modern enchantment.

Liar, trickster, mime

Let’s start with the first of those mannerisms, the lying to us. Here lies a paradox.
We trust the mirror. Once we come to know how it works as a reflective surface
we formulate a belief that the mirror image cannot lie: what we see inside the
mirror replicates what exists on the outside world. As human beings equipped
with the power of imagination we are able to think the impossible, to think of
what cannot exist and cannot be real. But nothing ‘unreal’ or ‘non-existent’ can
have a mirror image. Borrowing again the words of Umberto Eco: ‘A mirror does
not “translate”; it records what struck it just as it is struck. It tells the truth to an
inhuman extent, as it is well known by those who – facing a mirror – cannot
any longer deceive themselves about their freshness. Our brain interprets retinal
data; a mirror does not interpret an object.’8 Still, contrary to what we believe
the mirror greets us with a distortion of reality. Do you remember Gombrich’s
experiment from the Introduction? If you do, then you may recall that the
virtual face we look at in our mirror is half the size of our real head. The reason
for the misconception is simple: the mirror is always placed half way between us
and our reflection. Notwithstanding our common misconception about the size
of our looking-glass face, we are also harbouring wrong beliefs on how the size
of a mirroring is affected by our position in relation to the mirror. As studies in
optics have repeatedly demonstrated, we have indeed a very poor understanding
of images on mirror9 and the way we predict or perceive them. Indeed, most of
us are unaware of how or when the mirror makes something visible.
22 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

This misapprehension is not entirely our fault. Mirrors are ‘uncanny at a

basic physical and experiential level’.10 In the simplest of words mirrors are
tricksters: illusionist devices. The illusion of transparency that they give is the
exact opposite of what they really are. Made by various materials (polished
metal surfaces or silver glass), the mirror’s main characteristic is an almost
total non-absorption of light. Mirrors are actually perfectly opaque objects,
usually flat and polished, which reflect light. In physical terms, mirrors are
obstacles to light. Unlike the photographic camera that is made to capture
light, mirrors obstruct it. Specifically, mirrors invert light’s direction in space
but maintain its structure so we still perceive the optic array.11 Because of
that mirrors are extremely useful epistemic objects and prosthetic means,
used for many purposes – microscopes, telescopes or surgical equipment.
However, in this book we are especially concerned with the role mirrors play
as instruments for the acquisition of self-knowledge. In this context, mirrors
are better understood as objects of visual and perceptual trickery, sympathy
and affect. Mirrors have been lying to us so loudly and for so long that the lie
has become invisible. Even as we know that mirrors are perfectly opaque when
they appear transparent or that our mirroring is half the size of our real body,
we still refuse to see it. We are, it seems, unable to become aware of the mirror’s
illusion. What’s more, we do not care. We find little interest in the fact that the
mirror reflects what we are not: flat images on glass.

Phantomachia

As we said, one distinctive feature of the mirror image is that it appears as ‘alive’
as an image can be. But whatever is that we see in the mirror will certainly
perish as soon as our physical self walks away. Contrary to other forms and
media of representation our self-image will never find a permanent ‘rescue’ in
the looking-glass; it cannot be viewed again in the future, like a portrait or a
photograph. The mirroring is a mortal image. To paraphrase Jacques Derrida,
the mirror does not allow our ghosts to re-emerge. The phantom in the mirror
has nothing to do with the future; we cannot call it back. What does this mean?
In the 1983 film Ghost Dance (directed by Ken McMullen), we watch
Derrida declaring himself to be a ghost. Ghosts speak through him, he says,
 The Image Thief 23

and play his role. ‘The cinema is the art of ghosts, a battle of phantoms.’12 There
is a paradox: cinematography enhances the influence of ghosts, while it should
have diminished it, like modern technologies usually do. Indeed, contrary to
a mirror, a film gives images the ability to endlessly reappear. The cinematic
image becomes thus the living image and participates in a ‘phantomachia’: a
battle of images. Cinema is ‘the art of allowing ghosts to come back’.13 To be in
a film, for Derrida, is to become a ghost: an image and a voice that will haunt
us in the future.
The mirror, however, does not have the power to bring back the dead; it
does not present us with an opportunity of a technical ‘afterlife’. The mirror
image will not come back to haunt us or extend into the future. It will die
immediately and without a trace the moment we will walk away from the
mirror. The mirror has no language. Neither sounds nor images of the past
are transmitted through the mirror to distant places and distant people – like
a mime the mirroring is a silent, rooted presence. But there is still a battle
involved: that of the real body and the body in the mirror. The body in the
mirror appears living. It becomes a living phantom. Mimicry is a compelling
characteristic of the mirror image. It gives to it the illusion of life. It is also
an illusion we can maintain for as long as we want. The experience of mirror
gazing does not end abruptly by pressing the stop button on our video recorder
or with the photographic camera’s clicking sound. Time is not arrested in front
of a mirror. It is lived through. The mirror double not only changes posture and
moves (like images in film) but it does so in front of us, mimicking, unfailingly,
the present tense of our physical self. The ‘re-presentational mobility’14 of the
mirroring is of a distinctive kind. Mimicry invests the mirror image with
verisimilitude; it renders it more ‘alive’ than any other image, enabling it, thus,
to compete with life in the present tense.
The mirror presents us with a perfect illusion of bilocation,15 that is, the
feeling of being present in more than one place at a time. It challenges life as it
happens. The ‘phantomachia’ is of a different kind: the mirror does not allow
the past image to invade the present. The ‘threat’, the antagonism of the mirror
phantom is directly upon our living body and upon the breathing moment.
Similarly, the journey the mirror affords us is not from past to present, or
present to future like in film, but one of bilocation, of seeing an image of
us outside of our bodies. Looking in the mirror, therefore, is a travel from
24 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

‘here’ (in front of the mirror) to ‘there’ (on the glass) which does not translate
into reality. Yet, as our mirrored self shifts or smiles back to us, our genuine,
perceptual intuition concerning what we are seeing is clouded. Contrary to a
self-portrait or photograph, the apparent synchronicity of the reproduction
of the mirror image with our attempt (we see our mirror self ‘acting’ with
us) enhances the mirror’s ‘re-presentational illusion’,16 suspending our usual
perceptual routines of making sense of the world. The mirroring does not
await us inside a family photo album, framed on the wall, or ‘saved’ in the
digital memory of our computer. The life of the mirror image depends on
us. It is there to meet us whenever we look in the mirror; we leave and it
vanishes.

The terror of bilocation

The ability to gaze into our own eyes is, of course, a prosthetic ability rather than
a feature of human naked biological endowment. Our shadow-self in the mirror
might make us feel ill at ease: the mirror reflects unfailingly what our bodies were
not made to see – not in a blurry, lake-like manner, but in a crystal-clear visible
illusion. We are, of course, perfectly familiar with looking at our reflection, with
seeing virtual, mirrored selves. Still, there remains an oddity: a split between ‘I’
and ‘me’,17 between our physical self and our self-image. According to Ronald
Barthes, before the invention of photography,18 the vision of our photographic
double had been a major source of enchantment often related to hallucinosis. ‘But
today’, he argues, ‘it is as if we repressed the profound madness of Photography:
it reminds us of its mythic heritage only by that faint uneasiness which seizes me
when I look at “myself ” on a piece of paper.’19
The mirror image can also be profoundly unsettling, perhaps even more
than photography, as we will have the chance to illustrate in a variety of cases.
Of course, most people are perfectly accustomed with the mirror. We have
learned to forget and repress the profound madness of the mirror as well. Still,
even more than the photographic image, the mirroring, with its aptitude for
live mimicry, often reminds us something of the original unease and fear that
the experience of seeing our double outside of our bodies always embodies.
The presence of the mirror, our knowledge of this artefact, matches the vision
 The Image Thief 25

with reasonable explanation. Nevertheless, staring at our staring face may

become, after a while, uncomfortable.
To understand better the affective power of the mirror image and the
disquiet associated with it, we will, for a while, take the mirror away: it is
going to be us and our mirror double without the reassuring presence of the
looking-glass. How would such an experience be described? In psychiatric
terms, the encounter with one’s double correlates with the well-known disorder
of autoscopy – a term coined by the Greek words ‘autos’ (self) and ‘skopeo’
(looking at). Autoscopic phenomena are illusory visual experiences defined
by the perception of the images of one’s own body or one’s face within space,
either from an internal point of view, as in a mirror, or from an external point
of view.20 The perception of one’s exact double is often referred to as the mirror
hallucination. Also interesting is negative heautoscopy that describes the
inability to find one’s reflection in the mirror, and heautoscopic echropraxia
that refers to the perception of our double imitating our movements.
Autoscopic experiences feel real entailing, often, a sense of strangeness towards
one’s body. There is no clear indication of the duration of the phenomena; it
might take minutes, hours, or sometimes an illusionary double might be the
steady companion of a patient. Importantly, the experience of autoscopy is
mostly associated with feelings of absolute terror and shock that sometimes
lead to repeated suicide attempts. Franscesca Anzellotti and her colleagues
discuss the experience of a forty-year-old epileptic woman suffering from
depression and heautoscopic seizures. At times, during the heautoscopic
episodes she describes seeing an image of her body in normal size in front
of her as if looking in a mirror. The disturbing vision would be mimicking
her actions or be holding the same objects she was holding. The patient’s
double would appear at random, whether she was at home or outside working,
provoking a feeling of dissociation between her body and mind. The patient
described the chronic demoralizing effect of the experience and attributed to
it two attempted suicides. She claimed to be aware of her autoscopic body’s
words and thoughts and that the ‘experience of bilocation was petrifying and
shocking’.21 But no matter the degree of fear and uneasiness, the encounter
with one’s double, with a ‘doppelganger’,22 is always confusing. Patients often
report to locate themselves in the position of their illusionary mirroring, while
a sensation of detachment of one’s body and vertigo may also be involved.
26 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

It is no wonder that the vision of our double can be absolutely terrifying.

The relevant phenomena from psychopathology help to illustrate the profound
alterity that the experience of our mirror image as a form of bilocation often
entails. To various degrees, this profound alterity is something we all have briefly
experienced, when as small children we went through our own personal initiation
rites of mirror self-recognition. It is, however, in those rare anthropological
occasions that we are offered the opportunity to capture similar existential
transitions in small, and still unhabituated, communities (unaccustomed to
mirrors and self-images) that the fear of self-bilocation can be observed in its
natural context.
We can witness one of those rare ethnographic instances following the
anthropologist Edmund Carpenter to the territory of Papua New Guinea in
the South West Pacific. Carpenter, a forerunner in visual anthropology and
a close collaborator of media theorist Marshall McLuhan,23 found himself in
an extraordinary place. During the period of his study (1969–1970), Papua
New Guinea was still one of those unique territories where for many people
‘the steel axe, transistor radio, and camera arrived together’.24 As Carpenter
characteristically observes: ‘Port Moresby, the capital of the eastern section,
resembles a southern Californian town with air-conditioned buildings,
supermarkets, and a drive-in theatre. Four hundred miles to the west, tiny
isolated bands practice cannibalism. The bulk of the population lies between
these extremes, living in thousands of tiny villages and speaking over 700
different languages.’25 Back then, the territory of Papua New Guinea was also
in the process of becoming independent as a sovereign country. Modern media
like radio and film was about to reach, for the first time, this amazing mixture
of local communities and cultures. Carpenter was hired as a communication
consultant to help understand better the usage and the actual impact that the
introduction and spread of new media would have had on the isolated tribes
living in small bands on mountains, swamps and islands. He relished on
the opportunity to study the reaction of people who had never seen a whole
reflection of themselves in a mirror or camera – hardly a visual anthropologist
could have hoped for more interesting fieldwork.
What happens, Carpenter wondered, ‘when a person – for the first time –
sees himself in a mirror, in a photograph, on a screen’?26 One of the isolated
tribes that Carpenter had the opportunity to study was the Biami of the Papuan
 The Image Thief 27

Plateau. The Biami tribe lived in a place of murky rivers and were otherwise
unfamiliar with any metallic or slate-reflecting surfaces. Carpenter reports the
existence of coin-sized scraps of mirrors, too small to give self-reflections and
valued only as light reflectors.27 As one may have expected, eyes innocent to
the specular image would experience dissonance and confusion. But in this
instance what Carpenter observed seems more radical. Carpenter describes
the reaction of the people of the Biami tribe to the mirror as one of acute
anxiety, confusion and terror; emotions very similar to those experienced by
patients suffering episodes of autoscopic hallucination. In Carpenter’s words:
‘They were paralysed: after the first startled response – covering their mouth
and ducking their heads – they stood transfixed, staring at their images, only
their stomach muscles betraying their tension.’28 Unable to move, the anxiety
of Carpenter’s subjects became evident only by their trembling bodies. ‘It’s as
if they had vomited up an organ: they cover their mouth and duck their heads,
almost as a delayed reflex, trying to prevent this.’29
What was the cause of this ‘not ordinary fear?’30 According to Cameron’s
interpretation, the mirror image exposed a second ‘symbolic’ self to the
subjects, one that being outside of their bodies and the protected space of
the physical self, was made public and vulnerable. Of course, this challenge
to self-localization was only temporary. Habit, it seems, alleviates the terror
of bilocation – or masks it into a faint uneasiness. The members of the
Biami tribe, after a few days of contact with the mirror, were seen grooming
themselves casually in front of it. ‘When mirrors become a part of daily life,
it’s easy to forget how frightening self-discovery, self-awareness can be.’31
Habit eliminates the frightening and mesmerizing qualities of mirroring.
Unfortunately, it also dampens our curiosity and the wonder of self-discovery.
This brings us to another important point in our discussion. Some forms of
everyday technology retain the power to enchant us into seeing the world in a
more magical form. The anthropologist Alfred Gell writes that the ‘enchantment
of technology’ which is inherent in all kinds of technical processes32 is a force
that influences our emotions and behaviour – mainly by making us act in a
manner incomprehensible. Of course, given the right context, technology can
also have the opposite effect, disenchanting our ways of seeing and making
sense of the world. The mirror is one of those boundary objects of everyday
magic and science that carries the promise of uniting reality and imagination.
28 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

It delivers on that promise in a direct and powerful way as it presents us with a

universe where looking at our double is possible, scientifically explainable, and
therefore, safe. But even though habit takes away the terror of bilocation, it does
not take away the allure; the uneasiness that lurks beneath our encounter with
our double or the mesmerizing effect that goes with it. Mirror’s enchantment
primarily emanates from its distinctive ability to integrate within the same
temporal framework a series of causal transactions that encompass aesthetical
and magical elements. Unlike other images and representational media the
captivating power of the mirror, as a technology of enchantment, does not stem
from its ability to serve as an index of technical efficacy; rather, it primarily
emanates from the suggested intertwining of the lived phenomenal body and
its visible synchronous representation on the mirror’s surface. With mirroring
the image or our self is both presented and re-presented.

Vanishing act

The double in the mirror is a great illusionist. Our mirrored self ensnares
us in the way that a hunter disguises his or herself to mimic the appearance
of the prey animal (we discuss this extensively in Chapter 7). The mirror
double doesn’t just lure us with mimicry; it also eliminates its own medium:
the mirror. It is always the mirror image that we focus on. The mirror itself
becomes invisible; no one is looking at it. The medium does fall victim to
its product. This is because, unlike other images, the mirror image ‘borrows’
something of our life energy. So, when we talk about our relationship
with the mirror we mostly mean our relationship with our reflection. We
describe our perception, behaviour and emotion towards it. The moment in
which our body becomes visible in the glass is the moment where the mirror
‘vanishes’.
Mirrors change the way we see. They dictate what secret parts of us are
visible. The double that appears in it is an actor that always plays ‘us’. It mimics
our every move. It is made in our image. But it has no history, it carries no
memory and it has no life of its own. The mirror image has a place among the
family of images that is uncertain and always under dispute. It lacks material
traces – thus it is elusive and fleeting. It is accessible to everyone – thus it is
 The Image Thief 29

cheap and readily available. It makes our bodies visible – thus it is important
and unique. In the end, the mirroring is both precious and trivial. We cannot
clearly classify or easily describe it, but there is – and we have all felt it – a kind
of pressing demand on it, because of it we ask the most private question: we
ask of it to tell us who we are.
Remember that the paradox of mirroring is that, in one important sense,
the mirror image always tells the truth. As Eco remarks, one ‘cannot lie with
and through a mirror image’.33 Instinctively, and rather naively, we perceive
our mirroring as a sort of ‘us’: we are what we see in the mirror. And yet, to
put our mirrored self back where it belongs – in the inanimate sphere of optic
images – it only takes a gesture. All we have to do is raise our hand and try
to touch our mirror face. Naturally, the spell is broken. The sense of the cold
glass on our fingers provides us with the absolute limit of our habitual, warm
body. Our eyes, somehow, now stare at our hand: we are not what we look
like. Doing this exercise might at first seem strange: what can be said about
our mirrored bodies if we are not allowed to talk about visual appearances,
forms and representations? In that case, the resulting story would be of a
mirror gaze capable of bypassing appearances. A gaze that will probably lead
each one of us to different paths – all of them useful and worth exploring. In
the following chapters we explore some possible ways (out of many) to think
about the life of the mirror image. It is for each reader to decide where exactly
this might lead.
30
 3

Beautiful scars

‘Give me the glass, and therein will I read.’

William Shakespeare, Richard II

The gaze of the holy inquisition

Not a long time ago a friend shared with us a curious experience. Her story
opens like a farce: a lady walks into the beauty department of a popular high-
street shop. She looks around at products but without a clear intention to buy. A
young shopping assistant approaches and politely recommends a very effective
(and considerably expensive) cosmetic product: one with ‘real powers to battle
ageing and help, particularly, with those deep wrinkles on the forehead’. This is
uncomfortable news to the lady in the shop. Dismissively, and rather naively,
she suggests that she doesn’t need that product simply because she does not
have deep wrinkles on her forehead.
What does the vendor do?
She smiles knowingly and disappears under the counter for a short second
only to re-emerge, armed this time, with a huge ×10 magnifying mirror mounted
in a round frame, and fully equipped with a polished red handle. To understand
what is to follow, we first take a moment to appreciate the thing called the
magnifying mirror. As the name suggests, it is a lens used to present an enlarged
reflection of an object. It has a curved reflecting surface and many different
applications – most of them very useful to humankind. Like any other mirror, its
main job is to reflect light. A magnifying mirror, or a concave spherical mirror,
however, concentrates the light it reflects, directing all rays into a central focus
point. As a human face gets within the focal length of the mirror, the reflecting
32 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

light diverges, producing a magnified image. The aim of the magnifying mirror
is usually to allow one to inspect parts of one’s face – not to offer a realistic
and complete face reflection. To achieve that aim, one must preferably face the
mirror head on and not at an angle. Thus, the magnifying mirror of our story
was placed directly in front of our friend’s face, and at a very close distance, like
an inescapable object of destiny. Then, our friend was kindly invited to take a
good look specifically at her forehead and reconsider her situation.
She did.
And she reconsidered.
Describing her forehead to us afterwards, she announced that it resembles
verses of T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. She said that, in that mirror, her skin was
full of cracks and craters, veins pink and blue, deep wrinkles and deeper ones.
To summarize, our friend bought the expensive beauty product suggested
to her by the mirror-yielding vendor. The product failed on its promise. But
why did the enhanced visibility of lines and wriggles produce such a dramatic
effect? Laura Clarke and Meridith Griffin speak of an irony very much to the
point: ‘the irony of the women’s perceptions of being invisible as a result of
their visibly aged appearances’.1 That is, as signs of ageing become visible on
their skins, women, as well as men, might start to fear they will become socially
invisible. Understandably, having a mirror which will allow you to gaze on facial
blemishes next to anti-ageing products enables beauty industry to immediately
capitalize on that fear. Now, a magnifying mirror that would enlarge ten times
the visibility of the signs of ageing would boost the concern of looking older
accordingly. Not a bad idea for making profit. Still, there is a paradox: according
to Clarke and Griffin, available beauty work instead of enhancing women’s
appearance and social value end up highlighting ageist conceptions. Women,
even though aware of the discrimination and ageism, have no other option
but to submit to the prevailing ideology and try to mask their age by the use
of beauty products and cosmetic procedures: ‘That women engage in beauty
work suggests that regardless of their awareness or their agency, their choices
are ultimately determined in a world where to challenge ageist stereotypes is to
run the risk of further stigmatisation and permanent invisibility.’2
The mirror inspection was a test. Our friend in the beauty shop was forced to
evaluate herself against an enlarged mirror image of her face: a larger-than-life
reflection that not only did not resemble her but could hardly qualify as human.
 Beautiful scars 33

The very attempt, of course, was absurd: our friend’s forehead stood no chance.
And yet, in that ‘mirror trial’ the magnifying mirror had taken the role of both
prosecutor and judge in a peculiar holy inquisition against the heresy of ageing
skin. The mirror’s relationship to the person gazing in it was one of power,
grounded in the way society or institutions practice control through steered
judgements, regulating, for that purpose, human thoughts, senses and action.
In our case, the sense manipulated was sight: the way one gazes and perceives
one’s face in the mirror. The gaze was directed in a dexterous manner towards
the centre of a magnifying glass to meet not a habitual self-image but a face
fragmented into exaggerated parts. Consequently, the face was constructed by
the person holding the mirror – it was a face invented. It was also a face exhibited.
In front of the indisputable evidence of the magnifying mirror the lady
of our story turned into the most fervent judge of herself. Yet, it was not
just the magnifying mirror. It was the gaze she cast in it: a tyrannical and
incriminating gaze we call, with some liberty, the gaze of the holy inquisition,
because one can only be found guilty by it. Either we look in a magnifying
mirror, a regular one, or even at each other, the gaze reduces the body in its
parts – forehead, eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, chin, ears, neck, hands, etc. Then, it
puts blame on them. The gaze has even invented phrases to name and shame:
‘crows-feet’ for the skin around the eyes, ‘eleven lines’ for the bit between the
eyebrows, ‘marionette lines’ for the lines next to our lips, ‘turtle neck’, ‘bingo-
wings’ for our arms, ‘muffin-top’ for our waists, ‘cottage-cheese legs’, ‘snake-
nest’ for the veins on hands and feet and many more. The aim is to demean,
hurt and objectify people of a certain age or weight into submission. Young and
beautiful bodies, on the other hand, are ‘voraciously publicized and consumed
by popular culture’.3 The gaze of the holy inquisition produces a mirror
reflection which is virtually unwatchable for the great majority of people,
while obsessively stalking its young and attractive victims. ‘Institutionalized
gazing at youth, for example in mass media, is underpinned by the cultural
assumption that physical beauty itself is premised on youthfulness and
denied to older people.’4 Being convinced that to feel happy and lovable you
must look young and sexually attractive produces a serious conflict between
person and mirror and undermines self-identity: not looking young becomes
not looking like your ‘true self ’ which is hidden somewhere within old skin
and is realized as ‘a state in which the body is in opposition to the self ’.5 Under
34 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

these terms, one could end up feeling alienated from one’s mirrored body.
Gaining knowledge and self-awareness from mirror gazing becomes unlikely,
while looking in the mirror alone might turn into a painful experience.6
To look in the mirror is to ask for a story. There are many things we could
ask for the mirror to tell us. Mirror gazing solely for the purpose of evaluating
one’s beauty and youthfulness, however, limits the collaborating narrative
between mirror and mirror observer. In other words, beauty affords only one
question, while the mirror is capable of answering plenty. The mirror, in fact,
is a great storyteller. Although it does not speak, it draws stories out of our
minds. It makes a storyteller out of us all. The stories relate to how we interpret
our mirror image; how we treat it and put it into words. Indeed, we can ‘read’
the mirror in many different ways, none of which representing an absolute and
only truth. It all depends on the way we look in it. As with any other aspect
of visual experience, what we see in the mirror is always mediated: ‘The way
we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe.’7 The lady we
described staring into a magnifying glass in the beginning of our chapter, for
instance, inspected her mirror image from a specific point of view, afforded
by the beauty industry. Her gaze has been directed and exploited for profit.
Consequently, the story she made about herself had to do with the lack of an
idealized, smooth and unwrinkled mirrored face.
In the absence of an alternative way of looking in the mirror, the lady
in the beauty shop was left desperate about her appearance and, in a way,
disappointed of herself. ‘Personal narrative emerges out of experience while
giving shape to it.’8 In the case of mirror gazing, the mirrored self becomes
the centre around which our narrative develops. Inevitably, what we ‘shape’
with our narrative is our self. As consumer society censors and gives negative
meanings to ageing skin, our ageing skin in the mirror is perceived ‘as the
source of those meanings’.9 The body in the mirror, in other words, cannot be
separated from the propaganda built around it and is looked at as the original
source of the observer’s frustration. The mirror, thus, turns into a distorting
lens, an oppressive device for mistreating the self. Our friend describing her
skin as a Wasteland is a good indication for Kathleen Woodward’s ‘horror of
the mirror image’,10 the experience of abhorring our mirrored self.
It is often the case that, in order to feel the need to buy things, the stories
we tell ourselves while we gaze in the mirror would better be sad. Clearly,
 Beautiful scars 35

no person content in their image would go out searching for expensive skin
treatments. Beauty industry is colossal and to remain profitable customers
should continue to associate lines and blemishes on their skin with feelings of
misery and failure. This attitude is maintained and reinforced by an incessant
stream of advertising which relates unrealistic, retouched images of perfect
skin to a narrative of being happy, accepted and desired. It is a narrative of need
which makes us think that something is missing.11 It is also a fake narrative
against which we are invited to evaluate our mirroring. In reality, of course,
we are not invited to truly investigate our appearance in the mirror. We are
simply tricked into verifying the natural fact of growing older that equals our
inadequacy: our sharp contrast to the prevailing myth of eternal youth. Thus,
in the hands of the beauty and fashion industry, the mirror, through no fault
of its own, is transformed from an instrument of self-awareness into a tool of
oppression. But what exactly is it asked of the mirror viewer to achieve in order
to be happy?

A desire that can only look at itself

Advertising campaigns, apart from determining how we should look like, are
taking the extra step of putting their words into our minds.12 To do so they
come up with slogans, some of which become famous and stay in our heads
like forced incantations promoting a certain way of thinking, and therefore,
a way of seeing. L’Oréal’s successful slogan ‘because I’m worth it’ is a good
case in point. According to philosopher Simon Blackburn, one can hardly
find a better example to illustrate the mindset of a person self-absorbed, vain
and arrogant – a person on an imaginary pedestal uncaring for the rest of the
world.13 The promise communicated to the viewer is that they too can live on a
pedestal, forever enjoying the admiration and worship of the rest of humanity
if only they use L’Oréal products. So the ‘you’re worth it’, motto, simple and
seemingly harmless turns, in their minds, into ‘you aren’t worth it’, not yet. ‘“I
myself am but a poor worm,” thinks the victim, “with warts and fat and farts
and fears. But L’Oréal will waft me away, take me up to the empyrean, the other
world where the royalty – no, the gods – live free from mortal woes and flaws
and worries …”’14
36 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

Now, let’s wake up.

In the real world, L’Oréal’s (or any other company’s) cosmetic products could
never deliver on their promise for perfect skin. On the contrary, the constant
self-examining gaze promoted by advertising campaigns would make the
potential customer feel less beautiful and loved than they really are. Not only
are people’s expectations manipulated by advertising but their imagination as
well: readymade images of what is beautiful dominate and obscure our own
aesthetic practices and choices. Advertising slogans like the ‘because I am
worth it’ motto creep into our minds and then springs up in our everyday
lives as something acceptable and satisfying. It even becomes our voice: a
legitimate phrase we might repeat to others or, more importantly, to ourselves.
And when we gaze at our mirrored reflection the story we make about our
appearance, attractiveness and self-worth is not our own but intrusive echoes
of the mainstream propaganda. Like in a state of hypnosis, to use the words
of Marshall McLuhan, ‘[w]e have become so groggy, so passive, so helpless,
amidst the endless barrage of appeals that “we go about our business,” as we
say. But the business of the advertiser is to see that we go about our business
with some magic spell or tune or slogan throbbing quietly in the background
of our mind …’15
Our mirror gaze, in the end, is colonized. Our memory resembles a piece
of paper so overwritten with slogans that no words of our own can ever find
space: our ability to ‘author’ ourselves in front of the mirror is compromised.
Of course, we are all more or less aware of the false promises of advertising. The
digital tricks responsible for the images we see on visual media are not much of
a secret, and, to be fair, more often than not the context of advertisements is so
profoundly exaggerated one might wonder how we actually fall for it.
Still, we all fall for it, to some degree. And like it is the case with Gombrich’s
experiment we mentioned in the introduction – where circling the outline of
our mirrored reflection we find it to be much smaller than our true body – we
do not bother ourselves with it. It seems we are harbouring under the illusion
that, being aware of its tricks, our minds are protected, impervious to the
propaganda of consumer culture. Yet, a prerequisite of finding our way through
the hypnotic forest of advertising slogans (along with their accompanying
melodies and jingles) to a silent place where we can create our own stories, is to
accept the fact that we are not immune to the toxic and self-altering environment
 Beautiful scars 37

of advertising. This denial, ‘[t]he myth of immunity from persuasion may do

more to protect self-respect than accurately comprehend the subtleties and
implications of influence’.16
Clearly, not many of us would ever admit in believing the context of
advertising and even fewer would fail to acknowledge the irrational and
blown-up statements made by advertisers. Even ‘the creators of advertising
can claim that no one takes it all very seriously; it is more or less in fun.
The viewer can adopt a similar attitude. The viewer’s self-respect requires
a rejection on the conscious level along with some ridicule. Beneath the
ridicule the commercial does its work’.17 A self-assuring attitude alone cannot
block the influence of advertiser’s narratives. On the contrary, it has granted
the advertisers more space. All the ads around us – on the internet and social
media, on TV, on buses, on buildings, on bus stops, in magazines, in shopping
malls, in subway stations – are now so omnipresent and inescapable they
have become our environment. In that environment our desire is directed
and manipulated. It is polluted by slogans. It is reduced to praise-seeking.
It becomes self-absorbed. A desire that can only look at itself. In the end it
becomes a mere feeling of need.

The mirroring of disgust

If we fail to create a personal narrative in front of the mirror, we will be left

with the ones dictated to us. We might also begin to mimic the images we
receive through advertising, just like our mirror reflection unfailingly mimics
us. As Bernard Stiegler writes, ‘ a huge proportion of the population is totally
subjected to the aesthetic conditioning of marketing, now hegemonic for a
vast majority of the world, and is, therefore estranged from any experience of
aesthetic investigation’.18
So, the question is: do we really explore our options on how to appear in
the mirror or do we, somehow, take it on faith? Is mirror gazing for us an
experience of ‘aesthetic investigation’? We have said many times that advertisers
are trying to control our emotions and manipulate our desire. Here it is in
the very words of an American advertising agency: ‘what makes this country
(North America) great is the creation of needs and desires, the creation of
38 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

disgust for everything that is old and unfashionable.’19 Top marks then to the
advertisers for the ‘great countries’ and the disgust that they create. But, when
it comes to mirror gazing, the ‘old and unfashionable’ that we are schooled to
be disgusted by might include our bodies. So, what are we to do to escape the
feelings of lack and disgust the advertising industry is so proud of generating?
How can we ignore the idiotic and potentially painful propaganda?
Sadly, we cannot. At least, not the great majority of us without the iron
will of an ascetic. For the rest of us it will take some serious effort. It will not
happen spontaneously. As Erica Reischer and Kathryn Koo point out:

Despite our ability to theorize, analyze, and contextualize the underlying

meaning of beauty in contemporary culture, we are no less enthralled by its
display … As much as we find solace in well-worn adages that ‘beauty is only
skin deep’ and ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, our daily experience in
the social world, and even our own responses to the body beautiful, tell us
otherwise.20

Yes, beauty is usually culturally constructed. It changes from place to place and
through time, but beauty is important.

We are a self-conscious species. We struggle for social acceptance and

inclusion by endless attempts at influencing what others see in us, think of
us, represent of us. It is an all-too-human propensity that cuts across people
and cultures. We are obsessed with the idea of what is public about us,
obsessed with the representation other people might have of us …21

The need to be accepted and loved by others is a perfectly human characteristic.

According to Philippe Rochat, without others ‘we would not be. As infants we
would not have survived. As adults, we would not have any explicit sense
of who we are; we would have no ability, nor any inclination to be self-
conscious.’22
The mirror is a constant reminder of the eye of the other. As such, it is
constantly recruited in advertising. The pattern is more or less the same. At
first, the mirror reflects the sad faces of people who do not like what they
see in it. And then, the well-expected twist: the previously miserable faces
turn into triumphant ones, after having bought and used the right product.
In some ads the models are even broadcasted initially to be hiding from the
mirror as if afraid of the confrontation, but after whatever is advertised has
 Beautiful scars 39

been purchased, the models appear to have suddenly become empowered,

confident and ready to win the ‘mirror-battle’.
The promise of victory against the mirror is, by definition, empty.
Advertising is not out there to keep any promises – content and confident
people would make lousy consumers. Still, longing continuously for the joyous
and perfect environment of advertising we are somehow predisposed to dislike
our own. In this way, it is not easy to look sympathetically in the mirror or at
each other. A community of people, Stiegler notes is a community of feeling. If
we are unable to love things together (landscapes, towns, objects, images, etc.),
then we cannot love ourselves. ‘Being together’, claims the writer, ‘is feeling
together’.23 If a community of people is indeed defined by a common aesthetic
ground, then, perhaps our community of fake images and forced consumerism
is unable to gaze itself in the mirror. Instead of loving and appreciating things
together, and consequently loving ourselves, we are coached to do the opposite:
we are trained to look at each other and in the mirror with disregard, creating,
unfailingly, a culture of discontent.

Resistance

Should we avoid the mirror altogether? ‘The fear of social rejection is the
mother of all fears’, Rochat wrote.24 Would banning the mirror result in less
insecurity and fear? Even though excessively looking in the mirror might
not be healthy, a total ban on our self-reflection does not seem like an ideal
or a practical solution either. ‘Looking at ourselves in the mirror forces us
to repeatedly come to terms with who we are, even though we continually
change. This process of “mirroring” is in fact a central and inherent part of
“being in the world,” since it helps us through life to synchronize the reciprocal
interaction between the outer world and ourselves.’25 Creating a self-identity
without a mirror is not easily imagined. A modern society lacking mirrors is
a distant fantasy. After all, ‘a significant portion of human culture is based on
the reflected visibility of the personal self ’.26
Demonizing the mirror is easy. Yet, our lack of skill in dealing with our
mirroring is not the mirror’s fault. Depriving ourselves from knowing our self-
reflection cannot be helpful in our journey to find and care for ourselves. ‘One
40 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

cannot care for self without knowledge. The care for self is of course knowledge
of self.’27 Indeed, the mirror is a vital ally in finding oneself. But we do have to
escape the patronizing story of how we should appear in the looking-glass. The
story begins and ends with youth and beauty, at least for the vast majority of
advertisers and editors of beauty and life-style magazines. If we do not possess
either of the two we should be made to believe that we are irrelevant. Life and
experience are, in a sense, censored. In fact, the stories advertisers and editors
made are censored as well.

Thirty-five-thousand dollars’ worth of advertising was withdrawn from a

British magazine the day after the editor, Carol Sarler, was quoted as saying
that she found it hard to show women looking intelligent when they were
plastered with makeup. A grey-haired editor for a leading women’s magazine
told a grey haired writer, Mary Kay Blakely, that an article about the glories
of grey hair cost her magazine the Clairol account for six months.28

The censorship extends to the images of older women. Naomi Wolf quotes
a director of Life Magazine, Bob Ciano, admitting that all female images are
retouched. That goes also for ‘well-known [older] women who doesn’t want to
be retouched’.29 There is not even a choice for women to show their true image
to the public. This, of course, results in ignorant and manipulated readers that
as Dalma Heyn, editor of two women’s magazines, mentions in Wolf ’s book
have no idea what a real woman’s face looks like.30 Our relationship with the
mirror is deeply affected: ‘60-year-old readers look in the mirror and think
they look too old, because they are comparing themselves to some retouched
face smiling back at them from a magazine’.31 The issue is more serious than it
may at first appear. ‘It’s about the freedom to imagine one’s own future, to be
proud of one’s life. Airbrushing women’s face has the same political echo that
would resound if all positive images of blacks were routinely lightened.’32
Advice that women read in women’s magazines concerning cosmetic
products are totally untrustworthy. ‘Women’s magazines transmit “information”
about beauty products in a heavily self-censored medium. When you read
about skin creams and holy oils, you are not reading free speech. Beauty
editors are unable to tell the truth about their advertiser’s products. In Harper’s
Bazar article “Younger every Day”, opinions on various anti-aging creams were
solicited only and entirely from the presidents of ten cosmetic companies.’33
 Beautiful scars 41

Unfortunately, as Naomi Wolf correctly points out: ‘The healthier the industry,
the sicker are women’s consumer and civil rights.… The woman who buys a
product on the recommendation of beauty copy is paying for the privilege of
being lied to by two sources.’34
Somehow, we are supposed to accept the situation and not make a fuss about
being lied to. But since docilely accepting deceit does not sound like a brilliant
idea, how should we respond? This is not an easy challenge. You see, a story
will always ‘appear’ in the looking-glass, along with our reflection. A story that
explains us and puts our bodies into words. We share our life stories with the
mirror, like we share body memory with our bicycle.35 And we all act into the
world with our bodies. To paraphrase Merleau-Ponty, we are conscious of our
bodies through the world and of the world through our bodies.36 ‘The body’,
Merleau-Ponty wrote is, ‘our general medium for having a world’.37 We will
always need a narrative to help us make sense of our changing bodies in any
given time, and we should be making our own instead of rehearsing, like a
good student, the false consciousness of the oppressed.38 Every story that will
come out of this act is a story of resistance: an antidote, in other words, to the
deafening transmission of the ‘ageless regime’ and its manipulative fiction.
A narrative that will initiate a process of freedom.
The mirror could be put to use as a tool of resistance against the advertising
‘tutorials’ we endure every day, instead of being the advertiser’s weapon. Mirror
gazing can even amount to an act of civil disobedience (if you look in the
mirror in order to prepare a face that defies the social norm). Yet, one cannot
resist anything by asking the mirror if he or she is beautiful. Addressing the
mirror solely with question of beauty, youth and desirability cannot produce
the gaze of resistance we are after. On the contrary, it is the gaze that exists in
the tale of Snow White, where the evil queen desperately seeks reassurance
by asking her magic mirror, every day, if she is still ‘the fairest of them all’.
Likewise, in our image-obsessed culture we are herded to gaze in the mirror
in the same way. But the beauty question is only one of the many questions we
could ask the looking-glass, and it is a poor one, after all. A question doomed
to eventually create a negative narrative of the self: nobody remains young and
beautiful forever. To be honest, we seriously suspect that the mirror of the evil
queen in the story of Snow White was innocent – never diminished or uttered
a word back to her. The mirror is but a silent mime. What the queen was clearly
42 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

hearing each day in front of the looking-glass was nothing but her own verdict.
It was all in her head.
What we say to ourselves in front of the mirror is a choice. The crucial task,
therefore, is not to wonder if we appear beautiful in it. ‘How does a body figure
on its surface the very invisibility of its hidden depth?’39 asked Judith Butler.
We ask: how do we find that hidden and invisible depth in the mirror?

In search of beauty/in defence of a scar

In certain ways, a fairy tale and the world of perfect images produced in
advertising is equally imagined. According to this non-existent and yet
very visible world the body should appear young looking and of an almost
punishable weight.40 The absence of lines and spots on our faces, unnatural
and eventually unattainable, is the nothingness, the no-story we should all be
delighted to read in our mirrors. But in the end, when it comes to narrating
the self, the spotless face is an empty page. And there are more interesting
stories than absence. Fascinating and imaginative narratives might spring at
the interface of body and looking-glass.
What do we mean?
Let’s imagine a medical setting in London. A person recovering from
cosmetic surgery is presented with a mirror. The moment is thrilling. The
gaze that meets the glass is one of agony – are the signs of time gone? It is
really hard to tell. Certainly though, the face in the mirror seems different
than before. And, with equal certainty, we can assume that for the surgery
to be deemed successful the face in the mirror should appear smoother, the
pain should have been minimal and evidence of the surgery (marks, scars and
stitches) should be close to invisible. To smile at one’s mirrored reflection there
should be no obvious marks and no memory of procedure: no patient should
have any recollection of how it felt like when the surgical knife cut into the
skin. There is nothing for the resulting face to communicate. The face lift is
to be kept a secret. Quietly, secretively, the stitched-up skin should imitate
that of a younger person. The collaborative story of event, body and mirror is,
therefore, one of pretence: of hide and seek.
 Beautiful scars 43

To get to the heart of the matter we may contrast our example of cosmetic
surgery with the practice of scarification. Anthropological literature abounds
with a variety of techniques and narratives of this dramatic form of body
modification and inscription.41 Nuba girls of Southern Sudan, to take one
example, receive their first marks on their chest, abdomen and forehead when
they reach puberty. Cuts under their breasts mark the onset of menstruation.
Those same cuts are later enlarged in an extensive stage of scarring which occurs
after the successful weaning of the first child. Thus, the adult Nuba woman who
thrived in finding a husband and in having children will have elaborate designs
all over her body to show for it. Even though mainly for beauty, scars are also
attained to symbolize maturity and social status and to enhance memory. In
a way, they are marks that speak; marks that guide a person through their life
stories and also lead and direct the behaviour of others towards that person:
among the Ga’anda of Nigeria, marks on the stomach attract attention to a
girl’s reproductive promise. Later her forehead and forearms will receive their
own scars. Waist, buttocks, base of neck, shoulder and upper arms will follow
in a long process of marking life on the skin which will end with the final
marking of her thighs: marks that will seal her marriage and warn other young
men of her unavailability.42 A Nuba of Southern Sudan will examine their
body scars and be reminded of little triumphs: reaching adolescence, getting
married, becoming warriors and hunters, birthing and breastfeeding children.
Their whole life, victories and loses, pain and exultation, will be marked on
their skin in elaborate designs as a map of the self. The mirror will allow them
to read that map.
For another example we travel to Omdurman, a city in Sudan and
Khartoum State basking under a splendid sun on the west bank of the river
Nile. Anthropologist Anne Cloudsley follows the steps of a young girl who is
about to have a face tattoo: the dug al-shaloufa, which translates as the striking
of the lower lip. In a place where the custom of facial tattooing is so old that it
can be seen on mummies from Merotic cemeteries that particular lip tattoo is
very popular among brides-to-be.43
The dug al-shaloufa is, in our case, administered by a gypsy woman
named Zaneeb. It is an arduous process. Upon arrival in Zaneeb’s house,
the girl lies on a mat. The tattoo artist kneels behind her trapping her face
44 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

tightly between her knees: customers should not move because of the pain.
Zaneeb then grabs the girl’s lower lip between her fingers. She applies
generously on it a mixture of powdered charcoal soaked in the gallbladder
bile of a large Nile perch. She starts poking the lip with numerous needles
attached together. Blood is dripping out. Zaneeb wipes it away. She puts
more of her bile mixture on the girl’s lips; she pokes on. The atmosphere
is joyous. Friends are gathered around the girl telling jokes while holding
her arms and legs firmly down so that Zaneeb would finish the job. The
dug al-shaloufa takes approximately half an hour. The girl, like most of
the customers, faints more than once. Oftentimes, future brides choose to
have their upper gum tattooed as well, in which case, they are unable to eat
properly for days.
According to Anne Cloudsley, only engaged women may have lip tattoo.
So, with all its permanent marks and its memory of pain, the lip tattoo will
forever be a visual sign of a life-changing step. Unlike what is usually promised
in modern beauty clinics, the change on the woman’s face, as it is the case with
scarification, is intended to be boldly noticeable. Not subtle. Not painless. Not
reversible. Not natural. The event we read about in Cloudsley’s ethnography
is collective, bloody, noisy and joyous. A loud and shared story instead of a
personal, well-guarded secret.
If not deliberately muted, our bodies have a voice. Through labyrinths of
marks and memory our skin puts our lives into words. From the whispers
of a fine line to the screams of a scar, from the intentional tale of a tattoo to
the remarkable story of birth inscribed on the body by a caesarean section,
marks and wrinkles are alive, and, as one knows them intimately, constantly
commutating. There are times, of course, that the marks on our bodies could
speak of terrible things. But even then, the story expressed would be one of
survival. Of courage and enduring life. It would be a story we’ve been through
and should not be made to hide it. Unfortunately, in capitalist society we
are constantly ‘advised’ to put body marks out of sight. This literally means
concealing (with make-up), cutting (with surgical knives), plumping up (with
fillers), paralyse (with Botox) or burning away (with lasers) the evidence of our
being-in-the-world from our visible body; making, in other words, signs of our
life experience – and its mirrored evidence – invisible. Here is an irony, if there
ever was one: to become watchable and visible we must now erase ourselves.
 Beautiful scars 45

Beauty industry, of course, produces an enormous amount of services

and products that will not consume themselves. Constantly buying an ever-
increasing array of cosmetic goods and procedures is the part we are supposed
to play for the industry to be viable. Our body, however, is a magnificent
storyteller and, reflected in the mirror, its stories unfold: who we are, where
do we come from, how long have we been around, what have we gained and
lost, what have we been up to. To erase its marks is to silence the body. There
is no limit to what a body can convey through the act of gazing at it. In fact,
this is what we propose to do as a mirror-gazing exercise: find a scar or a mark
on our mirrored body and start a conversation with it. For instance? Well,
for instance, from the sight of a scar that goes back to our childhood and was
acquired falling of our bike, we can ask: what year was it? Who was our best
friend then? How did we spend our days? What did we dream about? And
there, in the lasting memory of a scar, we can dig out emotions and images,
tears and laughter, faces, voices, sounds and smells in narrow alleys and endless
summers that need that scar in order to survive.
This is how the body and the mirror create beauty. On the bare, visual
realities of the mirrored skin, there is a path to the infinite riches of our lived
experience that transcends the skin completely. What seems like the line of a
scar transforms itself to become a line in our personal narrative and a line we
can use to trace our self back to childhood: Ariadne’s skein of thread.
46
 Part Two

Re-enchantment
48
 4

Looking through the looking-glass

and so, what seems to you like a

barber’s basin, seems like Mambrino’s helmet to me,
and it may seem like something else to another
person.
Cervantes, Don Quixote

A world that goes the wrong way

On a winter’s afternoon, in one of Lewis Carroll’s stories, a young girl named

Alice decides to step through the drawing room’s mirror and explore the world
beyond it.1 Alice has had glimpses of that world – and in particular of the
‘looking-glass drawing room’ as she calls the room’s mirror reflection – by
climbing on a chair and looking into the big mirror hung over the chimney
piece. Spying like that in the mirror’s depths, Alice already knows a few things
about the looking-glass room. For instance, when she holds a book up to
the glass the letters of the looking-glass book go the other way. Curious and
excited to know more, Alice eventually climbs on the chimney piece and, as
the looking-glass turns into soft silver mist, steps through it. Indeed, things
on the other side of the mirror are strange: inanimate things, like chess pieces
and pictures, are very much alive and instead of a bitter-cold winter’s night,
walking out of the looking-glass house, Alice finds herself in a spring garden.
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, as the novel was
originally published in 1871, remains to this day one of the most famous
fictional endeavours to enter the mirror and glimpse at an alternate universe.
So, what did Alice find there? Carroll’s literary vision of the world inside the
50 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

mirror is playful and outside the ordinary. It makes sense in its own unique and
whimsical way. At times, that world mirrors our reality in a literary sense, as is
the case with the reverse printing of the Jabberwocky, the looking-glass poetry
book the verses of which are legible only against a mirror, or with Alice having
to walk in the opposite direction of where she means to go in order to get there.
But mostly, the parallels of our world and that of looking-glass are subtle and
untraceable. Clearly, the looking-glass world is not just a reflection of Alice’s
own. This would come as a surprise to anyone expecting mirroring to be the
prominent feature of a looking-glass universe. A second Alice, a double, is
remarkably missing. We must now search for what is indeed there to be found.
Notably, the first thing that happens to Alice once outside the looking-
glass house is to get lost. The garden’s path wouldn’t stay still: it twists and
turns and Alice, even though trying to reach the hill, is always returning
back to the house’s front door. Then, Alice starts a long discussion with
flowers in a flower-bed. But how does Alice mirror back to the looking-glass
creatures? It is perhaps natural for Alice to suppose that she is ‘normal’ while
the surrounding mirrored-world is extraordinary. Nevertheless, the reaction
of the looking-glass creatures indicates to the contrary: the living flowers
find her shape to be awkward, voices in the train suggests that Alice, having
failed to provide a ticket, should be sent back as a telegram, while the red
queen – a talking chess piece, to begin with – reproaches Alice for been a
child without any meaning, always wrong about more or less everything and
with a vicious, horrible temper. Clearly Carroll’s heroine has left the world
around her baffled and annoyed. If we are to accept that the way ‘others mirror
back what they see in us contributes to the self we become, subjectively and
objectively’,2 then, Alice wouldn’t make any sense of herself throughout her
journey. Alice appears to be as alien to her new world as that world is to her.
In fact, in terms of self-discovery, Alice is a hero who wonders a lot to find
nothing. She enters the space of the looking-glass world with apparent ease,
but cannot inhabit it – the roads seem to twist and turn on their own, most
of what she says or thinks seem nonsense to other creatures. ‘How I wish
I was one of them!’ Alice cries standing on top of a little hill, overlooking
the peculiar chess-board-like country made of tiny brooks. ‘I wouldn’t mind
being a Pawn, if only I might join – though of course I should like to be a
Queen, best.’3
 Looking through the Looking-Glass 51

So Alice did not find herself. If we were to leave our analysis here, in the
deep waters of self-perception, Alice’s journey through the looking-glass
would be an unremarkable tour in a most imaginative universe. But what if
we try to see what Alice did find? That is, forget for a while the mirror’s main
quality of reflecting oneself and try to considerate on the possible experience
of looking in the mirror not in order to see our double, but to see ‘through it’.
To explore the novel under this light, we will focus on the experience of being
inside Carroll’s world, and, purposefully, take it for granted. This approach
would necessitate a restructuring of the basic question. Instead of asking what
Carroll writes about Alice’s journey, we ask what happens there, as if there
really exists. In other words, we fully enter the scene and accept its terms with
an intention to believe the unbelievable, willingly suspending the idea that
our world (the reader’s world) is real and the looking-glass world (the story’s
word) is fantasy – let’s call this an attitude of methodological gullibility: a
strategic suspension of doubt.
Crossing that line between imagination and reality, the first thing we come
to realize is that certain categories – such as human and non-human, animate
and inanimate – have seized to exist, or more accurately are now reconfigured.
Traits and characteristics like speaking, reading, and knitting are not reserved
exclusively for humans. For instance, we learn that flowers can speak very
nicely. In fact, daises talk all together in shrill little voices and beetles are
capable of expressing opinions. Further on in the story, the White Queen
declares her unruly shawl to be out of temper and to refuse to stay where it’s
pinned. At the same time, humans can be seen by different species as animals,
plants, or something altogether unspecified: some characters in the looking-
glass world have no clue what kind of creature Alice is. A rose, nevertheless, in
the garden of live flowers, seems to be quite sure that Alice is a moving flower.
Alice journeys into a world that, paradoxically, seems to have acquired
a sort of a perspectival quality. We use the term ‘perspectival’ to describe a
world ‘inhabited by different sort of subjects or persons, human and non-
human, which apprehend reality from distinct points of view’.4 Brazilian
anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro best expressed the notion of
perspectivism in his study of the Amerindian people (see also Chapter 7).
Confronted by different ideas of personhood and nonhuman agency, his
ethnography portrays a world where animals or plants may be considered as
52 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

persons with the ability of language and where a human or animal external
form (or clothing) conceal a common spirituality. This is the prominent
feature in Carroll’s book and, even though we realize the obvious differences
and distinctions between the two works, we will, nonetheless, attempt a
connection. The aim is not to align the two works in order to explain the
one with the other, but to provide two knots in our connective pattern that
somehow drew together stories that belong to the different classifications of
ethnography and fiction. The mirror, in this instance, is the object helping us
walk our connecting line; the tool through which human imagination comes
in touch with the enthralling multiplicity of human existence.

Fabulous monsters

Everything has the potential to appear human-like in Alice Through the

Looking-Glass. Animals, inanimate objects, insects and plants not only behave
like persons but also have different perspectives on reality. The White Queen
explains to Alice that life, in her own perspective, goes backwards, and this
is certainly for the best since memory can work both ways: the things she
remembers best, the queen says, are the things that occurred the week after the
next. A gnat the size of a chicken is having a perfectly normal discussion with
Alice, suggesting that it’s entirely pointless for insects to have a name if they
won’t answer to it. The first thing that Alice notices, once through the looking-
glass, is that all sort of inanimate objects are being animated. The clock on the
mantelpiece has the face of a smiling old man, while in the untidy atmosphere
of the looking-glass room the chess-pieces are moving and talking to each
other. In fact, they exist in pairs: The Red Queen and the Red King, the White
Queen and the White King are sitting together on the shovel, chessmen are
wandering about and two Castles are walking arm in arm. Amazingly, stepping
through literatures’ mirror, we do not find reflections but a trail to a non-
anthropocentric understanding of the world similar to that of Amerindian
perspectivism where different species experience different realities, but all
share a common humanity. Alice does not simply enter that world; she engages
into a dialogue with it.
 Looking through the Looking-Glass 53

Viveiros de Castro suggested that while multiculturalist cosmologies –

Western cosmologies – are based on the idea of a unity of nature and a plurality
of cultures (our bodies are the same but we have differences in spirit) for the
Amerindian societies, we are spiritually the same but are different in physicality.
This might mean that a human and an animal are equally a ‘person’ bearing
inside the same humanity, while their bodies are different. Similarly, a human
from a different tribe might not be considered to be a ‘person’ despite the obvious
bodily similarities. Therefore, the term ‘multinatural’ (different physicalities)
better fits the Amerindian perspective where culture is the guaranteed and the
universal while physical substance is the particular. Similarly, whatever the
physical form of the creatures Alice meets along her journey – plants, animals,
things – they all seem to behave as persons. The Sheep, to take but one of them,
that Alice encounters in a little shop is described as sitting in a chair, knitting.
From time to time, and in a grandmother’s fashion, the Sheep would glance
at Alice through huge eyeglasses. Both Alice and the Sheep engage in a long
conversation that makes very little sense since each character has their own
single view of reality and use of English language: when Alice asks the Sheep
for permission to look around, the Sheep points at the sheer impossibility of
her request, as Alice may look in front of her and on both sides but never all
around her – she clearly does not possess eyes at the back of her head. Trying
to do as she is told, Alice looks at the shelves in order to find something to buy,
but, keeping with the theme of animism, items are starting to move away from
her. In the end, the incidence with the sheep becomes even more absurd: Alice
finds herself inside a little boat gliding along a river, while the Sheep declares
her to be a little goose.
This is how ‘fictional perspectivism’ is depicted in Carroll’s story. But
what happens when parallel qualities exist, not inside the pages of a book,
but somewhere in our own very real world? How do humans and animals
see themselves and each other in this case? According to Viveiros de Castro,
humans view ‘humans as humans, animals as animals and spirits (if they see
them) as spirits; however, animals (predators) and spirits see humans as animals
(as prey) to the same extent that animals (as prey) see humans as spirits or as
animals (predators)’.5 Animals, on the other hand, see themselves as humans.
They think they are anthropomorphic creatures, living in human houses and
participating in human cultural activities. They also believe that they are eating
54 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

human food – Viveiros de Castro writes how blood may be perceived as beer
by jaguars and maggots are believed to be fish by vultures.
What if Alice was there? An opening chapter of such a story could see Alice
entering a village, full of palm trees, exotic birds and inhabited by jaguars.
Alice could enter a hut, to find two jaguars that think they are sitting on a
dinner table, talking about their day and drinking beer. Alice would see the
jaguars as animals, and find their human behaviour and talking abilities very
strange, while the jaguars would be astonished by Alice’s presence, not being
certain as to what kind of animal is she. Quite a similar incidence exists in
Alice Through the Looking-Glass, when Alice meets a Lion and a Unicorn
at war with each other. Both animals are pictured by Helen Oxenbury as
standing on two feet, engaging in what appears to be a feast fight. When the
Unicorn sees Alice he is shocked and appalled by her sight and demands to be
told immediately what is this. When he is informed by Haigha – illustrated as
a walking hare wearing white ballerina shoes, a robe and a brown bag hanging
around his neck – that this is a human child, the Unicorn declares her to be
a ‘fabulous monster’. But then, he is curious to know if the child is alive. All
that time, of course, Alice is referred to as ‘it’ by everyone in the company.
Haigha then points out that Alice must be alive since she can talk. As a proof,
Alice is asked to speak. Alice obliges, saying that she too thinks unicorns to be
‘fabulous monsters’ and that, so far, she had never seen one alive before. What
the Unicorn replies is, perhaps, the ticket to understanding and appreciating
any world which is different to our own: ‘Well now that we have seen each
other,’ said the Unicorn, ‘if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a
bargain?’6
Alice’s story also presents us with an essential discovery: to find ourselves in
a remarkable world of endless possibility, we need a broken mirror. We need to
allow the solid glass to disappear and come to terms with the fact that what we
have been looking at in the mirror, all this time, is an illusion. We can of course
choose to maintain that illusion, stay firm in front of the mirror’s frame, or
we can create a more flexible space where the glass used to stand. The second
choice is more interesting. We call it the gaze of imagination: our mirror image,
in this case, does not simply mimic and reflect us but may also – as in the case
of Alice – change us, disagree with us, guide us into somewhere else.
 Looking through the Looking-Glass 55

Animals are people

While in Carroll’s fiction animals appear to wear human clothes, or to

walk with their hands in their pockets, in De Castro’s ethnography, bodily
characteristics like fur or claws are considered to be an external form. ‘In
sum, animals are people, or see themselves as persons … the manifest form
of each species is a mere envelope (a “clothing”) which conceals an internal
human form’.7 Different physicality which would serve to differentiate the
species, is indigenously perceived as clothes, particular skins that all enclose
the same inner humanity. ‘Thus, humanity is both a constant and a variable, a
common interiority and a multi-form physicality. Every physicality is human
physicality, but with some distinguishing diacritical marking.’8 In Alice’s world
this is evident as all creatures, regardless of their skin or physical appearance,
believe themselves to be human and behave as such. Even the Red Queen (an
object) sees herself as a human queen and acts accordingly: in the beginning of
the story, she declares that all ways in the world belong to her. In the looking-
glass world, animals and objects are illustrated having their own distinct
form while, most of the times, also bearing pieces of human clothing. Things,
even though for the most part maintain their shapes, are often pictured with
a human face: Humpty Dumpty is depicted in the form of an egg but still
possesses eyes, ears, a nose, a mouth, hands and feet. In addition, he is wearing
a cravat and becomes indeed very upset when Alice mistakes it for a belt. As
Humpty Dumpty makes clear, his cravat is a present from the White King and
Queen. A frog, later on in the story, appears before Alice dressed in bright
yellow and wearing big boots.
For an Amazonian tribe, a Jaguar can be a person, and its claws are a
distinctive feature, a natural accessory like gloves or a scarf. No matter the
clothes, skin, or fur, humanity and not animality is the original stage for all
species. This common and shared interiority that endures within many bodily
forms often finds expression in the cosmogonic myths of the Amerindians.
In some of them an explanation is offered on how animals once came to lose
their human qualities. It goes like this: at first, animals and humans were
persons, both had consciousness, language, and intentionality, but then
animals changed and acquired more distinctive characteristics and places.
56 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

People did not change but continued to be human. Therefore, ‘animals are ex-
humans, not humans ex-animals.’9 Applied to Alice’s story, for instance, where
she meets the knitting sheep, we would identify their encounter as belonging
to a past time, where both humans and animals unfailingly shared common
qualities and enjoyed a human interiority. If we were to continue in the spirit
of the Amerindian myths, Alice would go on to behave like a human being,
but the sheep who appeared dressed in human clothes, thinking and speaking,
would change to assume different forms. In some of them it would continue
to appear like a human-sheep, keeping a shop and rowing on boats, in others,
it would perfectly resemble an animal-sheep. It might also inhabit different
places: human places or spirit worlds.
Philippe Descola is another anthropologist studying societies where any clear
distinction between humans and non-humans as we know it in the Western
world does not exist.10 Paying particular attention to the relations of native
groups with their environment, Descola theorized on cosmologies in which
spirits, animals or plants belong, along with humans, to the same category of
‘persons’. Animism is one of the four modes of identification (i.e. the various
properties of existing beings, human and non-human, as well as the ways of
experiencing the world). The other three are defined as: totemism, naturalism
and analogism.11 Animism is presented as the main mode of identification
among the hunters of Siberia, South and North America, and parts of Asia
and Melanesia, where a marked similarity of interiority is perceived among a
great variety of different species. Simply put, humans and non-human species
have similar qualities and spirits but different bodies. In some occasions, this
continuous interiority extends not only to animals but to plants as well, or
even to physical phenomena and planets – the sun and moon, for example –
regardless of the apparently different physicality between species, and between
species and things. Humans, animals, plants, objects might be considered to
be a person with thoughts, language and self-consciousness. Physical bodies
exist in multi-forms, each with its own special ways of growth, reproduction
and existence in a habitat, but their differentiation does not forbid species
to be connected by a human interiority and even see themselves as having a
human physicality in addition to their own. Therefore, different species have
human physicality with distinctive features: people are humans-humans while
vultures are vultures-humans and plants are plants-humans.
 Looking through the Looking-Glass 57

In Alice’s world, characters have similar interiority but are different in

appearance or physicality. Alice, for instance, is a human-human, while the
Lion is a lion-human creature. And since each of those characters perceive and
experience their being-in-the-world in a distinctive way (the Unicorn believes
that Alice is a monster and that a cake should be handed around first and then
cut in pieces), we might say that Alice’s world is characteristic of perspectival
animism: a world where Descola’s animism and de Castro’s perspectivism
are in constant dialogue. So, far from encountering her self-reflection, Alice’s
journey takes an unexpected ontological turn: from a fantasy world of mirrors
into an animistic reality, where all creatures and things share an underlying
humanity but express multiple and incompatible points of view. The mirror’s
glass dissolved into a silver mist, allowing us to find the looking-glass world: a
place that does not quite exist, but imitate, in the peculiar style of a mirroring,
the ontology of another.

The gaze of imagination

Carroll’s mirror is clearly misused. Alice looks into it with the eyes of a child.
That means looking into the mirror to find not a face but an adventure. In
this manner, her face, room and reality do not matter much – if at all. For
Alice, existence is possible in the absence of interest in her own reflection.
But what kind of existence becomes possible in the light of that loss? The
answer lies in a series of overlapping but distinct lines of thinking. First of
all, the mirror becomes an object of infinite possibilities: in collaboration
with our imagination, it gives being to what does not exist. This should not
be surprising. The mirror is an amazing object to imagine with. It takes us
deep into envisioned settings but still reflects the rest of the world – in the
case of Carroll’s story, the rest of the drawing room – it still imposes a kind of
order. The mirror, therefore, serves as a unique aid of human imagination in
the sense of offering a space of absolute freedom while, by design, maintaining
a basic framework of bendable reality.
Let us now, as a second step, concentrate on loss – the ‘real’ mirroring in
the looking-glass we are willing to forfeit for the sake of an adventure. Do you
remember the case of Carpenter and the feelings of tribal terror the mirror
58 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

image provoked to the members of the Biami tribe? It is not unusual for the
mirror to provoke contrasting emotions or to relate to opposing situations.
Freud has commented that once he watched his grandson engaged in two
games of loss: one as he looked himself in the mirror, and then as he crouched
beneath its level. For Freud the experience was associated with the separation
of a child from its mother.12 Jacques Lacan claimed that human beings are
not born having the capacity to understand their separation with their
environment and the world.13 This skill is acquired with the help of mirror
gazing during the time he called ‘the mirror stage’ where an infant is starting
to recognize its mirrored image. According to Lacan, the mirror stage comes
between the ages of eight to eighteen months. Learning to recognize ourselves
in the mirror and internalizing our mirror reflection creates a concrete body
image and helps us locate ourselves in space. By the end of the mirror stage,
humans obtain ‘the armour of an alienating identity’.14 Recognizing itself in
the mirror, the child now identifies with its external image and in doing so ‘it
shifts from the illusion of oneness (identity with the caregiver and the image
in the mirror) to the inevitability of separation’.15
The loss of togetherness, the process of alienation that begins with mirror
self-recognition, results in an ‘outside’ world which is differentiated from us:
self and others acquire thick impenetrable borders. Inevitably, the sense of
being united with the rest of the world is lost. We are becoming individuals, as
if by force. What do we gain? Eventually, we assume our personal identities. We
come to know who we are and, because of the mirror, what do we look like to
others. There is only one point in Carroll’s story when that acquired identity is
lost: the moment when Alice enters the wood with no names. Keeping with the
theme of disorientation, and on her way to the Eighth Square, Alice enters this
dark forest where all things are nameless. Once in there Alice forgets her own
name, as well as the names of the trees, the flowers, the birds and everything
else in that forest. Alice realizes what is happening – she was prepared for it –
and is determined to recall her name. She fails. All she can wrongly assume
now is that her name begins with an ‘L’.
It is at that time of confusion and identity loss that a fawn comes her way.
The fawn seems unaware of its name too and feels no fear of Alice’s presence.
And for as long as neither human nor animal have any idea who they are,
they walk together with Alice putting her arms tenderly around the neck
 Looking through the Looking-Glass 59

of the fawn. At that point any sense of mirroring in Alice’s story completely
vanishes, along with her sense of self. Because of that loss, Alice, through
a broken mirror, becomes one with the forest and its creatures. Nameless
and, in a way, selfless, they keep going peacefully in each other’s company.
But as soon as they get further away, the fawn remembers it is a fawn and
recognizes Alice as a human child. The strangely harmonious and almost
mystical atmosphere is vanished. The fawn cries out their separate identities
and is suddenly terrified of Alice. In a state of alarm, the animal dashes away,
leaving behind a saddened Alice on the verge of tears. That was the one short
point in the book where Alice appeared to be in harmony with a creature
of the looking-glass world, for otherwise, they all seemed weird and funny
and sometimes even scary and frustrating. In this short scene, the eternal
crisis of separation and individuation is nicely exemplified. Out of the woods,
Alice and the fawn possess a new knowledge – the knowledge of the self –
possible mainly through the mirror image. Both, in a way, suddenly ‘wear’
Lacan’s armour of alienating identity. The sense of a united universe is now
unattainable.

Broken mirror

In front of the mirror we are presented with a view that exceeds our natural
capacity of vision. We gaze at an image which, first of all, includes us as an
object in full form. We also gaze at the world as if we have eyes on our back.
But there is always a blind spot. Alice notices that spot – the place behind the
fireplace – and builds an alternative universe based on that curiosity. Thus,
linking knowledge and imagination, she constructs a world that is not only
beyond her vision but also beyond existence. For the construction of that
universe, the mirror provides the scaffolding. For our mirror-gazing exercise,
in this chapter, we attempt to do the same. That is, we look in the mirror not to
find our self-reflection but a world around it, and beyond it; we step through
the looking-glass ourselves.
The aim is to break our habitual interaction with the mirror. To experience
how it feels like when we are not concerned with our looks and to explore in
what ways this is possible. Hopefully, looking through the mirror and not at
60 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

it, we will achieve, at least for a short moment, a creative gaze: the kind that
imagines universes beyond reflection.
This way of looking in the mirror is defined by unguarded expectation and
is open to multiple interpretations of the world. It is also gullible; it begs for
surprises, it creates drama. How we appear on the glass is not part of this story.
The narrative produced by the mirror will be of things we take very little notice
of – like that space behind the fireplace. The exciting question is thus: what else
is there?
To think this way about the mirror is to begin to work out what it reflects
not as a readymade image but as a site of aesthetic traces, signs and material
memories. Timothy Morton calls it, ‘an object-oriented view of causality’.16 In
that sense, the mirror image is like performance art. A reflective surface where
you can choose and construct a personal, undisciplined reality. The mirror will
do for us what it does for every writer: it will give us a frame to create a story.
It will present us, automatically, with a phantom of our material surroundings.
It is up to us to envision possible extensions: worlds related to but are not in
accordance with our own. So, apart from us, what else appears in the looking-
glass? If there is a door where does that door open to? If there is a wall what
might be behind it?
In a way, this is an exercise of neglect. We ignore our mirror image; we
pass over it in search of creative and imaginary narratives and alternate mode
of existence. This is not how things should be. Mirrors are not there for us to
exercise our creativity. They are there to help us see our body. Society is also
there to force us to put judgement on what we see. Still, pondering in front of
the mirror on the idea of a world beyond, one may find extraordinary things.
Alice did find a looking-glass world. We could outline our own, or even come
to terms with our unwillingness to do so. Perhaps we feel more comfortable
with a world that revolves around and ends firmly on our mirrored self.
After all, the gaze of imagination cannot offer a full view, but only ephemeral
glimpses of a world that would be confusing and unreliable: a world we can
enter briefly, and completely alone.
There is always a choice. In case we choose to look through the mirror
and not at it, we might even find a world without reflections: a world of
‘togetherness’, of less rigid selves where we do not know our names or do not
care to remember them. The ‘armour of alienating identity’ might fall off our
 Looking through the Looking-Glass 61

shoulders. Like Alice, we may walk into a forest where all beings are united.
Behind the blind spot of our mirror is where our own deer appears. First, it
approaches a river. It leans its head over the water. No reflection of its face.
It looks closer. Again, no mirroring. The deer stares at us in surprise, with
its large brown eyes. Then, it walks close to us, swiftly and hurriedly as if it
has been waiting for this moment for years and, for the first time, touches
us with its head. We suddenly understand what the deer is saying to us. We
realize that, all this while, we have been sharing the same household. We
touch each other to keep warm. We can keep it that way, as long as we stand
in front of the mirror and see no face in it. But how long can that be?
62
 5

The other in the mirror

Masters and slaves

What we see in the mirror might not always be our choice. Sometimes, the
mirror presents us with a strange face – a face which is not our own – even
when we do not cast in it an adventurous gaze. Other times, and even as the
mirror reflects our face faithfully, it nevertheless leaves us with a peculiar sense
of doubt: ‘is it really me?’ It is almost as if the mirror has a choice on how to
reflect us. What do we mean? We will spend this chapter explaining.
Let’s begin where Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking-Glass ends: that
is the point where Alice wakes up.1 There, it becomes obvious that Carroll’s
imagined universe was one of dreams. The threat usually entailed in a strange
world inside a mirror is absent. The atmosphere is light-hearted, full of puns
and jokes, and there is only one point where things take a more sinister
turn: the dream of the Red King hypothesis. In Chapter 4, Tweedledum and
Tweedledee challenge Alice to think about the possibility of her being, not
real, but a character in the king’s dream. The Red King, in the meantime, is
sleeping in the woods, snoring wildly and piercingly. Alice, who at first thinks
she is listening to the roar of a beast, objects strenuously to the idea of being
part of the king’s sleep – a king who does not even look like one at all, collapsed
on the grass with his red sleeping gown and night cap. As Tweedledum and
Tweedledee insist that Alice does not really exist and will vanish when the
king wakes up, the girl starts to cry. Alice certainly gets lost several times, faces
criticism by unfamiliar creatures and encounters a fair amount of nonsense in
the duration of her adventure, but this is the only time when doubt is cast over
her survival. Of course, being present in a looking-glass world entails a risk
on one’s existence. Appearing might not mean living, but being a living image,
64 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

a mirror phantom, a ghost. Still, this passing suggestion does not alter the
playful impression of Alice’s looking-glass world into something ominous. If
we would like to examine a more perilous mirror world then, perhaps, writer,
essayist and poet Jorge Luis Borges’ gaze would fit us best.
In his story ‘Fauna of Mirrors’, Borges’ imagination takes us back to the
times of the Yellow Emperor: an era where both worlds, the specular and
the human, are inhabited by people.2 Passing through mirrors and crossing
the border of these worlds is not something extraordinary. On the contrary,
human people and mirror people are in regular contact and living in harmony
with one another – even though the mirror people are different, and their
world inside the mirror is nothing like our own in shapes and in colours. But
then, the mirror people invade the earth and war breaks. Humans win the
bloody feud because of the powerful magic of the Yellow Emperor. The mirror
people are sentenced to act as humans’ mirror images, up to this very day.
So, what we actually see when we look in the mirror is not our double, but
our mimic-slave. Deprived of their powers and their own forms, the mirror
people are there to endlessly serve us. A world of warning: Borges ends his tale
with the grim prophecy of a second war between the specular and the human
realm. The Emperor’s spell, he writes, is not going to last forever. The mirror
creatures will eventually awaken. First, the Fish will start to stir in the mirror’s
depth and a line in a colour unseen before by any human will finally become
visible. Then, gradually, the mirror people will start to disobey us, to move
differently than us and reclaim their own forms. Once free from iron or glass,
the mirror people will attack and, this time, will win the compact. A clatter of
weapons, the writer tells us, coming from the depths of our mirrors, will signal
the new war.
Borges has always been afraid of the looking-glass. His poem Mirrors
starts with this very confession: the horror the writer feels in the presence of a
mirror. The sense that, within the four walls of a room the ‘crystal spies on us’.3
Borges’ imaginary gaze casts light onto the endless tension between body and
reflection, person and mirrored self. In his writing, a mirror in a room disrupts
one’s loneliness and invades one’s privacy. It is no wonder, then, that through
Borges’ mirror gaze our reflection, ‘the other in the mirror’, becomes our enemy;
a prisoner of war chained down and forced into mimesis by a powerful spell.
Borges also raises an interesting point: being a mirror image is a life sentence;
 The Other in the Mirror 65

to mimic something is to be its slave. Perhaps this is something to consider as

we try to mimic the images from advertising and fashion industry. There is
also something else: Borges claims that we’ve won the war. We are the masters
of our reflection. Indeed, our reflection unfailingly imitates our movement in
the mirror. On the other hand, we depend on it for self-awareness. From our
mirroring we seek knowledge of who we are, of how other people see us, in
short, our thoughts and behaviour are guided by a slavish, immaterial mirror
phantom; so what does that make us? Can it be the case that, concerning our
mirroring, we are simultaneously masters and slaves?
At least in one thing, Borges is right: it is not over. Nothing is ever done
with when it comes to one’s mirror reflection. Understanding it, putting it
into words is, by all means, a constant struggle. As self-image has taken on a
tremendous significance, the mirror seems to occupy more and more of our
thoughts. Even without the second war of Borges’ prophecy, and without the
clatter of any weapons, the mirror people are gaining ground.

Mirror fiction

The mirror is a curious object. If we do not look in it we lose, at least partly,

our sense of self. If we do look, we might become trapped and victimized.
The knowledge acquired through the mirror is, therefore, never easy. It is
an unsettling form of knowledge, pricy and full of thorns, and it comes with
the introduction of a specular double – a phantom-self which appears at an
outside, alienating space. Now, if we are to stare in the mirror, continuously
and with guided determination, something unexpected might happen.
At this time, we refer to a series of experiments done by the psychologist
Giovanni Caputo. The experiments included the witnessing of strange faces
in the mirror by people gazing at their reflected image in a dimly lit room.4
The basic experimental design was simple. In a quiet room, lit by a 25W light
placed on the floor behind the participant observers so as not to be visible, a
big mirror was placed in front of the observer’s face at a 0.4-metre distance.
Fifty healthy, young individuals were involved in the study. The task was to
stare for ten minutes at their mirrored faces. As Caputo reports, it took less
than a minute for them to perceive what he called ‘the strange face illusion’.
66 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

That is, an unfamiliar face, staring back at them inside the mirror. When the
ten-minute mirror gazing session ended, all the participants reported striking
deformation of their mirror reflection. Their description of what they saw in
the mirror varied from person to person including considerable deformation
of their own faces, an unknown face, a parent’s face either alive or deceased,
the face of an animal, imaginary monsters and lastly some of the participants
reported witnessing archetypal faces or ancestral portraits in the mirror (an
old woman, a shaman, a child).
In simple words, the familiar mirror faces of the participants disappeared.
Strange ones, other people’s faces – both living and dead – animal faces like cats,
pigs or lions, even fantastical monstrous beings appeared inside the looking-
glass. Those new mirror faces, Caputo writes, produced to the participants
a sensation of otherness, a kind of a dissociative identity effect. Anxiety was
reported by participants who perceived a malign expression on the strange
mirror face. Positive emotions, on the other hand, were experienced when
the face in the mirror appeared to be smiling or cheerful. The vision of
monstrous beings in the mirror – like a witch or a skull – produced mainly
fear and uneasiness. Dead relatives were associated with pensive emotions and
a contemplative mood. Caputo reports that, overall, the experiment evoked
intense emotional reactions and was, at times, an unsettling experience.
The ‘others’ that people see in the mirror under those circumstances are, of
course, not really there. Images conjured up inside one’s mind – a haphazard
mix of local and global facial features, phantoms of one’s peripheral vision,
emotions and memories – are all coming together to produce visions and
images that have nothing to envy of Borges’ fantasy. So what do we learn? First
of all, a scientific fact: visual illusions, that is, the perception of strange looking-
glass faces, can easily be witnessed by subjects during a lab experiment. There
is indeed a mirror gaze capable to summon something as extraordinary as
monsters and witches. Finally, the mirror is not to be trusted – that last part, of
course, we already knew. Yet, we are prone to believe the mirror’s fiction. Partly
because our behaviour in front of the mirror, and the things we see in it, is
seldom deprived of meaning. Strange-face illusions may be the psychodynamic
projection of the subject’s unconscious archetypal contents into the mirror
image. Therefore, strange-face illusions might provide both an ecological
setting and an experimental technique for the ‘imaging of the unconscious’.5
 The Other in the Mirror 67

To put it simply, what we see in the mirror is not really there, but it might
well be in our minds. The strange images we stare at inside the looking-
glass, Caputo claims, may be projected by us as part of our unconscious.
Open to challenges, the validity of this claim is subject to further research.
Nevertheless, Caputo, influenced by Jung’s ideas on psychology and alchemy,
claims a possible connection between archetypal contents and strange-face
illusion. Among others, he refers to the archetype of the shadow in connection
to the strange-face illusions of witches and monsters perceived by naive
observers. He also refers to the strange-face illusion of the old man in relation
to the archetype of the old sage. Strange-face illusions, different from pseudo-
hallucinations produced by magic mirrors, are, according to Caputo, more
likely to reflect the projection of archetypes.
While real mirrors are tools of self-awareness and, possibly, surfaces for
the projection of the unconscious, literary mirrors are there to accommodate
myriads of possibilities. Unrestricted, the literary mirror can summon into
being any image conceivable. In other words, the ‘other’ in the mirror can take
any form.

Erised

We start with the description of a famous mirror hidden away in the magical
Hogwarts Castle. In J. K. Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s
Stone’, a young wizard named Harry, wandering illicitly in the library’s
restricted section, enters an empty classroom in order to escape Argus Filch,
the school’s caretaker.6 Once in there, his attention is caught by an object
standing out among piled desks and chairs: ‘something that didn’t look as if
it belonged there, something that looked as if someone had just put it there
to keep it out of the way. It was a magnificent mirror, as high as the ceiling,
with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet.’7 Upon its frame the
phrase ‘Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi’ was inscribed. A phrase
which, at first glance, means nothing, but spelled backwards as if reflected in
a mirror, it reads: ‘I show not your face but your heart’s desire’. In a similar
manner – the manner of the reverse printing of the Jabberwocky, the looking-
glass poetry book – the name of the mirror ‘Erised’ actually reads ‘desire’.
68 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

Thus, facing Harry Potter inside the dimly lit classroom is the ancient mirror
of desire, that is not there for self-reflection.
Being true to its promise the mirror presents Harry Potter, once he steps
in front of it, with a totally unexpected image: he is now surrounded by other
people. ‘He had to clap his hands to his mouth to stop himself screaming. He
whirled around … for he had seen not only himself in the mirror but a whole
crowd of people standing right behind him.’8 Petrified, Harry checks over his
shoulder, only to realize that no one seems to be standing there; the room is
deserted and silent. Looking into the mirror again, however, the mysterious
crowd reappears right behind him. At first, the startled boy thinks that the
people he sees might be invisible to the naked eye and only the mirror can reveal
them. But as his repeated attempts to touch them fail, Harry Potter realizes that
the weird crowd exists only inside the glass. The woman standing closer to him,
crying and smiling at the same time, Harry believes to be his mother.

A woman standing right behind his reflection was smiling at him and
waving … She had dark red hair and her eyes – her eyes are just as mine,
Harry thought … The tall, thin, black-haired man standing next to her put
his arms around her. He wore glasses, and his hair was untidy. It stuck up at
the back, just like Harry’s did.9

Soon, it becomes clear that Harry is staring at his parents and other family
members. ‘Harry was so close to the mirror now that his nose was nearly
touching that of his reflection. “Mum?” he whispered. “Dad?”’10 Only his
parents were dead.
If we were to make a comparison, we could say that the ‘strange face in
the mirror’, in the case of Rowling’s novel, takes the form of dead relatives.
In a way, Harry Potter’s mirror gazing meets Caputo’s criteria: the room as
described by the writer is only half-lit and Harry Potter is staring continuously
in the looking-glass. Many of Caputo’s subjects did claim to see faces of dead
parents in the mirror. The faces provoked intense emotional reactions and
pensive feelings – a dead parent looking at you from the depth of the looking-
glass is bound to be mesmerizing and eerie. Yet, the fictional boy who stares in
the mirror is experiencing, we learn from Dumbledore, the effects of magic:
inside the mirror of Erised the faces of the dead do not just appear staring –
they move, smile and wave. ‘Harry looked into the faces of the other people
and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, even a little old man who looked
 The Other in the Mirror 69

as though he had Harry’s knobbly knees … The Potters smiled and waved
at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against
the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through and reach them.’11
Imagination augments the mirror’s natural capacities to surprise and enchant
us: it enhances the mirror’s enticing qualities; it builds upon them. An original
uncanny trick, the mirror’s attraction for images and apparitions that are not
‘us’, becomes the core around which fantastical stories and fictional universes
are built. The mirror of Erised reflects the deepest desire of everyone that
stands in front of it. It turns desire to vision and thus captivates its victims.
Rowling’s story does a great job weaving together wish and self-reflection,
anchoring the relationship in the material object of the mirror. The desire of
the mirror of Erised – desire spelled backwards – can bring madness just as
easily as it can bring delight. In fact, the mirror is cruel. The desire it brings
forth is, in the words of Dumbledore, a desperate one: ‘It shows us nothing
more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts.’12 But it
is a desire of fundamental lack: the mirror gives to the viewer a visual taste
of their obsessions. The vision can be maintained for as long as one remains
fixed in front of it. Like all mirrors, the mirror of Erised is in its unique way
a perfect trap. It captures the observer using as bait a dominant, fixating
longing.
Rowling points to an all too human characteristic: the chase of the
impossible self in front of the looking-glass. In the case of Harry Potter, that
impossible self takes the form of a boy surrounded by parents and a loving
extended family; a boy who is no longer an orphan. The magic mirror in
Rowling’s writing produces a destructive gaze that triggers and aggravates
feelings of need and dissatisfaction. It is a gaze that begs for whatever we have
not. Without offering guidance or opportunity, the mirror of Erised provides
us with glimpses at an unattainable, idolized existence – an ‘if only’ that
suddenly becomes agonizingly visible.

A portrait’s gaze

Dorian Grey, the young, handsome aristocrat in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of
Dorian Grey, has his portrait painted by his friend and artist Basil Hallward.13
Infatuated by his own beauty, Dorian Grey becomes desperate at the idea
70 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

of ageing, while his portrait remains unaltered and eternally beautiful. He

becomes envious of his portrait and a terrible wish takes form: Dorian Grey
declares he is ready to give up his soul for the situation to be reversed. That is, for
the portrait to age while he remains forever young. The living subject, in other
words, becomes jealous of the image’s still nature and wishes it upon himself.
At the same time, the image acquires the human ability of transformation.
That the transformation is horrific has to do with the moral of the story: sin
comes at a dire cost.
So, the portrait of Dorian Grey becomes an image that shares life experience
with its subject. The despair of Dorian Grey over old age and the fading of
youth bring about the ‘humanization’ of his picture, which in itself leads up
to the abolishment of a great divide: that between human and painted image.
The extraordinary eradication of that boundary results in a catastrophic
disembodiment of experience: Dorian acts upon the world but remains
untouched by it. The world cannot act upon Dorian. Time and action is to be
marked only on his image: it is the face of his portrait that is tainted by Dorian’s
very first act of cruelty. The night he abandons Sibyl Vane, the innocent young
actress he used to love, his deed becomes evident not on his face but on canvas.
That night, after watching her giving a talentless performance, Dorian is told
by Sibyl that she is quitting the stage. The young girl is not interested in acting
anymore. She plans to devote her life entirely to him. But Dorian loved Sibyl
the brilliant actress. Disappointed, he tells her that without her acting, she is
of no interest to him. He tells her that she has failed him and heartlessly leaves
her sobbing and crouching on the floor.
On his return home, Dorian notices that his portrait has changed. The
expression on the face seems altered as if his lips are now touched by cruelty.
Utterly surprised, Dorian draws up the blind in the hope that the impression of
callousness would be swept away from his picture, along with all other fantastic
shadows that have taken shelter into the dimness of his room. He looks again.
Yet, the light of dawn makes the change even more noticeable. ‘The quivering,
ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as
if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.’14
This is the first time in Oscar Wilde’s story that Dorian’s picture acts as a mirror
of a very specific sort: a mirror that reveals to Dorian not the reflection of
his face but what his face would have looked like if it still had the capacity
 The Other in the Mirror 71

to register the life of its owner. Indeed, that capacity had now passed over to
the painting and Dorian’s skin was never to alter again in any way. Unlike any
human being, his flesh is not accountable to his deeds. His image, on the other
hand, would bear the burns of his excesses.
In the beginning the young man is content by his new reality. If anything,
he feels sorry for his painted image, for it would have to suffer the scars and
blows of time and of his sins. The image will reflect Dorian’s life, and Dorian
will have to gaze at it, as one gazes upon one’s mirror for self-awareness. The
image, in other words, is to become responsive to Dorian’s life in ways that
Dorian himself will never be. Thus, Dorian becomes a soulless spectator of his
actions. He declares his portrait to be ‘the most magical of mirrors’,15 revealing
his soul to him and having access on secrets about his life that he himself has
not: ‘It (the portrait) had received the news of Sibyl Vane’s death before he had
known of it himself. It was conscious of the events of life as they occurred. The
vicious cruelty that marred the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared
at the very moment that the girl had drunk the poison.’16
A new and more powerful narrator has emerged to take over Dorian’s
story. Dorian has forfeited this role. The reciprocal interaction between body
and world is not evident on his skin, and thus, his mirrored self is deprived
of stories. There is a profound emptiness and boredom involved in Dorian’s
eternal youth. So much so that in the end Dorian, for all his beauty, becomes
disenchanted by it. The story of his life, his passions, his secrets, his triumphs
or failures, are all to be told by a picture. Dorian becomes aware that his
relationship with the looking-glass is now obsolete. The line of cruelty around
his lips that Dorian noticed on his portrait are absent in the mirror and so will
be all other marks. ‘He winced, and, taking up from the table an oval glass
framed in ivory Cupids, one of Lord Henry’s many presents to him, glanced
hurriedly into its polished depths. No line like that warped his red lips. What
did it mean?’17 It means that from then on, mirrors in the story of Dorian Grey
are the most useless of objects. The only true mirror is the portrait and the only
gaze that matters is the portrait’s gaze. Through the portrait’s eyes Dorian’s
disintegrated soul is looking straight at him – burdened first with the terrible
gravity of Sibyl Vane’s suicide and later on with Hallward’s murder. It is indeed
a terrifying gaze and it makes Dorian, for all his beauty, conscious of himself
as a dreadful object to behold.
72 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

Almost two decades later, Dorian stares in that same mirror Lord Henry
has given him. This time, Dorian is very much aware of the ‘still’ nature of
his mirroring. His eternal youth has lost its appeal; his unstained beauty now
seems more like sarcasm. Once again, the mirror that Oscar Wilde interestingly
describes as a ‘polish shield’,18 reflects Dorian’s unsullied appearance. Enraged,
Dorian thinks that the mirror reveals nothing of him but a fake facade that
conceals his true identity. His face is indeed there on the glass but it is not
him: his true, disfigured and hideous self is staring at him from the hidden
portrait. For Dorian Grey the ‘other in the mirror’ is a living mask – a vision of
eternal youth, pinned down against the currents of time like a dead butterfly.
‘His beauty has been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery.’19 The mirror
image has taken the qualities of a painting: a frozen past moment forever
extending into the present. A dismayed Dorian throws the mirror on the
floor and manically crashes it into splinters. The destruction of the mirror is
a crucial moment in the story and the dire consequence to follow is, perhaps,
the reason that Oscar Wilde called it ‘a shield’ in the first place.20 The symbolic
death of the mirror now leaves Dorian ‘shield-less’ at the mercy of his portrait.
The portrait’s gaze, unopposed by Dorian’s gaze in the looking-glass, splits
Dorian in two: his body becomes a timeless alien while his soul and conscience
relocate on the canvas. At the same time, the portrait feels like a stranger to
Dorian – an appalling stranger, reproaching and punishing him ceaselessly for
his moral faults. The portrait, now, instead of a magical mirror becomes ‘an
unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was looking at’.21
Jacques Lacan’s distinction between eye and gaze finds distinct parallel in
the story of Dorian Grey.22 Dorian becomes painfully aware of his body as
both, subject and object, the seeing and the seen. In a reversibility of vision, the
man’s face is now looked at critically by his portrait. In fact, the human eye –
Dorian’s eye gazing in the mirror – becomes irrelevant but the portrait’s gaze
strikes Dorian with a tyrannical, unbearable force, objectifying him in front
of his own image. As a man untouched by life, Dorian is very hard to define.
A different body exists for him in extracorporeal space and both ‘bodies’ –
portrait and living Dorian – are reciprocally gazing at each other.
The gaze of the portrait verifies the loss of Dorian’s innocence, the abolition
of his humanity and inevitably his death. Dorian, unable to withstand the view
of his picture, stubs it with the same knife he used to kill Basil Hallward years
 The Other in the Mirror 73

ago. But, by piercing the canvas, Dorian himself dies, assuming the form of a
grotesque old man. The portrait now resembles a perfect young Dorian. Order
between subject and object, lifeless reflection and living body, is restored and
by Dorian’s death the mirror is resurrected: the mirroring of Dorian’s dead
body would be that of an aged disfigured man.

Living masks

Let’s continue with the theme of not recognizing or agreeing with what we see
in the mirror. We have already discussed Caputo’s mirror-gazing experiments
that involved apparitions of strange faces in the mirror. Now, we will look
into a related study by the same author, where subjects are staring into a
mirror while wearing a mask. The aim of the experiments is to test whether
individuals would experience the ‘living mask illusion’. That is whether they
would attribute living characteristic to an inanimate, human-like mask.23
The mask in question is an original Japanese ritual mask – a Shinto mask of
god Bugaku measuring 0.24 metre in width and 0.3 metre in height. Seven
participants – four men and three women – wearing the mask were placed
in a white 3 metre by 4 metre room under dim lighting and engaged in
mirror gazing. The observers were unaware of the experiment’s objective and,
according to Caputo’s report, all ‘quite spontaneously described the worn mask
as a living being, having living expressions, even if they had not been told this
may happen in the initial instructions’.24
The mask-wearing observers stared at their self-reflection in a mirror
measuring 0.5 metre by 0.5 metre. The mirror was placed on a tripod in the
centre of the room and at a distance of 0.4 metre from the observers. The
individuals were instructed to keep staring into the eyes of the mask, press
the button in case the mask appeared to be alive and hold it for as long as the
illusion was maintained. After a ten-minute mirror-gazing session, participants
were asked to describe their experience. The experiment resulted in all mask-
wearing participants perceiving apparitions of the living mask.
Classification of phenomenological descriptions, Caputo writes,
demonstrates that the mask-wearing observers perceived apparitions of
deformed traits, animals and monstrous beings. In relation to the previous
74 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

mirror-gazing experiments, Caputo states that living masks and strange

faces in the mirror are similar phenomena. Still, in the mask-wearing gazing
sessions, all of the observers reported archetypal apparitions which involved
a man (a serious man, a bearded man and a very old man), a smiling child,
an ancient warrior, a Gorgon’s head and a shaman. Caputo attributes the
polymorphic apparitions to the evocative power of the Shinto mask. ‘When
a mask is worn, it temporarily turns into an embodied part of one’s self or,
in other words, the self is projected into a physical object, the mask, that is
afforded into one’s body neighbourhood.’25 It is interesting that Dorian Grey,
looking into the mirror for the last time in his life, claims he sees a mask: a
beautiful young face staring back at him. Sensing the weight of his invisible
years on his soul, he disowns the sight. Dorian Grey’s beautiful, living face
feels like a mask. In Caputo’s experiment, on the other hand, the mask seems
like a living face in the mirror.
The magic of eternal youth and the fear of growing old are two of the most
compelling themes related to the mirror, either real or fictional. And for all its
trickery, the mirror sustains its reputation as a precise and impartial judge of
people’s looks. In Sylvia Plath’s poetry, for instance, the mirror even speaks to
the reader in the first person, claiming to always be truthful and to reflect things
just as they are.26 Then, having no false modesty, the mirror declares itself to
be the eye of a four-cornered god, uninfluenced by emotions. Nevertheless,
the mirror is proved to be a liar because of a woman’s gaze. That is, a woman
who stares in it every day, searching for who she is.27 The mirror claims to be
faithful to the woman by reflecting justly everything it sees, but the woman,
rewards its honesty with tears.28 Obviously, the woman is not happy with what
she sees.
But what does the woman see?
What is that truthful mirror image which, in the end, drives her to tears?
The mirror claims to be looked at as if it was a lake. Bending over it every
day, the woman is witnessing a little girl drowning, while the image of an old
woman reaches towards her, resembling a horrifying fish. These are, in this
case, the two ‘others’ in Plath’s mirror. At this point, we realize that mirror
images might not be so factual after all. At least, not in the eye of the observer.
What we learn from the mirror’s narrative has nothing to do with the woman’s
physical appearance – the colour of her eyes, the shape of her face, the curves
 The Other in the Mirror 75

of her lips. Instead of receiving the precise and clear mirror image we were
promised at the beginning of the poem, we only get a sense of the woman’s age
– nothing specific, just that she is not at the blossom of her youth or at least she
does not think that she is – and that she dreads growing old. The atmosphere
is ominous and disturbing, owing to the imagery of the drowned girl (probably
representing the loss of youth) and of the terrible fish that rises from the ‘lake’s’
depths (which hints at the woman’s idea of her future as an old person).
Like Dorian Grey, the lady in Plath’s poem is horrified of future old age
and desperate of losing, or having lost, her youth. She casts in her mirror a
gaze so full of melancholy and fear that it clouds anything else we, or she,
might have learnt from it. Even though, unlike Dorian Grey, her face is not
frozen but changes with time, she is also in agony. To her, the ageing face is
interpreted as the drowning of youth. To Dorian the youthful, unchanging
face in the mirror is interpreted as a treacherous living mask. Both have one
thing in common: they are disgusted by their mirroring. It seems that one
can never get it right – concerning the mirrored self something will always
be amiss.
Is it the mirror’s fault? In Sylvia Plath’s poem the mirror does its part. It
reflects the woman faithfully, it follows her around the room, it ‘clings’ onto
her. But the woman, as most people, does not simply accept her reflection.
Instead, she interprets it. As a result, the exactness the mirror claims to offer in
the beginning of the poem, the truthful reflection, becomes deeply subjective.
‘The other in the mirror’ becomes, once more, the enemy. Perhaps, by speaking
directly to us, Sylvia Plath’s mirror tries to communicate how poorly we are at
interpreting our mirrored selves: ‘I am impartial and precise. You just don’t
know how to look in me.’

This cannot be me

So, how do mirrors ‘reflect’ our imagination? In literature, mirrors reveal

our deepest fears and wishes. Sometimes, even in real life they have the
capacity to trick our gaze into seeing things that are not really there. Mirrors
represent our worries and pleasures in various ways. Not all of us, for
instance, associate growing up with imagery of dreadful fishes or are ready
76 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

to bargain our soul to retain our youthful looks. Yet, to all of us, the self-
reflection holds a specific importance. The mirror image ‘touches’ us in a way
that no other image ever could: we do not look at our mirrored self like we do
at anything else we see in front of us. We are immediately involved, mentally
and physically. We are concerned. The relation of mirror and imagination is
just as extraordinary. That is because the mirror ‘agrees’ with our imagination
more than any other object: in fiction, pumpkins are turned into carriages
and brooms fly, but there is no way that our broom would actually fly. A
broom would never entertain or partake in our imaginings. The mirror is
a different story. The mirror has a special affinity with fantasy. Gazing in it,
the mirror evokes imaginary things into being. Harry Potter saw images of
his dead parents in his magical mirror but there is a good chance that we
can too, if, of course, we follow closely the instruction of Caputo’s mirror-
gazing experiments. For mirrors, fiction is not the opposite of reality. Reality
and fiction blend. Daydreaming and desire, nightmares and subconscious
fears are drawn into the looking-glass. This is not accidental. As Caputo’s
experiments demonstrate, the apparition of dead parents in the mirror may
happen not only to fictional characters but to real observers under specific
circumstances. Masks may come to life, animals and fantastical monsters
may appear instead of one’s face in the mirror. And what we learn is this:
to the sentiment of not looking like ourselves in the mirror, to the odd ‘this
cannot be me’ moment, the mirror fully agrees. If we search for others in the
mirror, the mirror will oblige. For it is in its nature to create visual illusions,
fictional selves, dissociative others. It is as if, unlike any other object, the
mirror imagines together with its observer. It becomes an active conspirator
in the creation of fantastical visions. In this way the mirror adds to the
meaning and enigma of the reflected face.
We propose a mirror-gazing experiment to see if we can assume a new
and unexpected self-reflection. In other words, to take the feeling of ‘I am not
looking quite myself today’ and take it further. We suggest standing in a dimly
lit and quiet room and gaze in the mirror without interruption for ten minutes.
This is an exercise on the mysteries of the self: we test if it can ‘slip away’. And
if we see a strange face in the mirror, what would it look like? Would there be
anything on it that we can still call our own? Of course, we may not even see a
human face. There might be an imaginary creature or an animal. The very deer
 The Other in the Mirror 77

which took residence in this book waits for us, as the ‘other’ in our mirror. It
seems inexplicable to be reflected there. It makes no sense. But it is not sense
or the substantiality of one’s face we are now seeking to explore in the mirror:
it is its elusive nature. In fact, what we aim to realize is that hypnotically staring
in the mirror is not the secret to finding who we are. Sometimes, even in a
real mirror, reality is missing. Indeed, as the mirror has a very strange sense
of humour, staring in it might result in an experience quite opposite to self-
knowledge: a vision of Sylvia Path’s terrible fish or Caputo’s ghosts. The mirror
is not always an objective space.
Yes, the mirror can speak the truth, but it can also devour it.
78
 6

The gaze of the shaman

Mongolia: A land of permeable borders

Do people always look in the mirror? It may come as a surprise but, in some
places of the world, the answer is no. But mirrors are there to be looked at,
are they not? It depends. The mirror we are mostly familiar with is an object
used and appreciated for its ability to reflect things. And yet, a different kind
of mirror does exist – one which is valued for what lies beyond its non-
reflective side. To find out more about this peculiar type of mirror, in this
chapter, we follow the anthropologist Caroline Humphrey to North West
and Easter Inner Mongolia and Buryatia.1 Humphrey describes two kinds
of mirrors: the household mirror (that has glass on one of its sides) and the
shamanic mirror (usually made entirely out of brass or bronze). We begin
with the former.
The household mirrors are massive and square. We find them opposite the
door of the Mongol tent, in the hoimor (honourable place), positioned above
a painted wooden chest (called the avdvar) that contains precious household
belongings. Household mirrors never stand alone. They are surrounded
by religious icons, pictures of family members, offerings and other valuable
objects.
According to the anthropologist Rebecca Empson, young daughters-
in-law or elderly female members of the family feed the Mongolian chest
(avdvar) ‘with offerings and attend to and change its form. In turn, visitors to
a household are expected to respond to it. As one enters a house, after greeting
the host, one is expected to go to the chest and, while bowing down towards
it, knock one’s head (mörgöx) against its surface three times and turn a prayer
wheel or offer some money or sweets to the religious icons or to a portrait of
the host’s deceased relative.’2
80 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

The bulky mirror in the centre of the visual display in the hoimor is
among the first things that one notices on entering the tent as it stands at its
sacred place, the edge of the living space – behind it is outside. The mirror
is heavily tilted and therefore hardly able to offer a reflection.3 At times,
the mirror is even turned around, with its shiny surface facing the wall like
a naughty child or covered completely with a cloth. Clearly, our familiar
practice of self-inspection cannot account for the Mongolian household
mirror.
So what does the mirror do?
According to Humphrey, the mirrors are possibly put on houses for their
luminosity and multiplicity effects. They are used for lighting up the space and
enriching and doubling the surrounding precious objects. But mirrors have
also hidden and dangerous qualities. Buryats of Eastern Mongolia fret that
mirrors absorb and reproduce appalling events: an upsetting quarrel, a death
in the family, a thunder storm can be taken in by the mirror and leaked out
at any time in the future with unpredicted consequences. That is why, when
such events occur, mirrors should be concealed, turned around or covered up
completely.
Reflections of things happened may reside inside a mirror.4 A household
mirror, therefore, is full of family secrets. It contains stories, shadows and
images of the past (good or bad), that should never be out in public. So,
mirrors are not to be sold. Rather, they have to be destroyed. Mirrors must not
be allowed to spill out their stored secrets. Even during uneventful times, very
young children are not allowed to look in a mirror. This time the prohibition
concerns children’s abilities to perceive things that adults may not. The
reflective side of a mirror is a place of mystery, and in it things appear that
grown-up eyes are blind to. In case of youngsters, nonetheless, those things
are still visible.
Arguably, such an object is not to be taken lightly. Careless gazing in the
Mongolian looking-glass is unwise. To check their appearance, when needed,
people use small hand mirrors instead. And that with caution. Parents advise
their children not to look at their reflections too often. There is a fear of losing
oneself in the mirror. Not, as Humphrey writes referring to Rebecca Empson,
in the way that Narcissus lost himself, but lose one self by becoming attached
to ‘“another self,” not that of the real world’.5 It is a fear mostly associated with
 The gaze of the shaman 81

the other side: the world beyond the mirror of which only passing shadows
and flashing lights we sometimes notice. That is, we think, an idea close
to Borges’ mirror people – close, but not the same (see Chapter 6). In fact,
there is a profound difference between the two: we accept the idea of Borges’
mirror people (a world populated with persons similar to us, existing at the
other side of the mirror in which we look) as ‘fiction’, that is something that
could not ‘really’ affect us. But in the case of the Buryats the threat is real. It
is real because it matters and has important consequences for the Buryats’
modes of being. With the fictional mirror, we are able to immerse our self
into the enchanted world of reflection, to get a glimpse into extraordinary
places beyond the glass. We allow our self to be astonished by stories of living
mirrors, mirrors possessed by vengeful spirits or mirrors that are shiny portals
to all kinds of terrors. And yet, even though we cross, in our imagination,
the borders of the looking-glass, the borders hold. What we experience – the
unworldly, fascinating beasts; the upside down universes; the angry ghosts –
are safely trapped inside the mirror, which is in turn safely stored inside the
confines of literature or film or any other media.6 The thrill can reach us, but
the dangers cannot. The fantasy mirror is a mirror made of words, enacted
in our imagination. It is a relatively safe adventure – a sort of an ‘imaginary
enchantment’: enchantment in the tamed setting of make-believe, a rose
without thorns.
For the Buryats of Western Mongolia, it is a rather different story. The
captivating, and at times threatening, interiority of the mirror leaks into
the real world. To them, the fantasy mirror and the real mirror are one and
the same object. The mirror’s enchantment that we, in our modern world,
have pushed back and locked inside a specific literary genre is perilous and
unrestrained. We are now on a land of permeable borders.

The world at the other side of the mirror

The world of the living and the world of the dead in Mongolia have a border
that, according to Humphrey’s ethnography, can be crossed from either
side. The two worlds can glance into each other through a shaman’s mirror.7
Visibility for those on either side is a play of shadows and dazzling images: a
82 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

story of light and darkness. The shamanic mirror allows visibility among the
living and the dead. As a material agent, the shaman’s mirror, the toli, can act
as a portal, a weapon and a shield. A living person glances from outside into
it. The opposite way is the way of the dead. Spirits look from inside the mirror
at the world outside and at us. They see us as creatures, ‘red worms of the
Sunny World’ (nartyn ulaan horhod).8 The living seems soft to them, small and
lacking in physical ability. People in Mongolia are aware of the invisible world
beyond the mirror. A regular person though may rarely catch the image of the
dead into the mirror’s glittering surface. Only shamans enter their world and
they do so through their mirrors.
Shamans, that can be either males or females, are human beings possessed by
spirits. Therefore, shamans, at certain times, can be spirits.9 Unlike household
mirrors, shamanic mirrors are made entirely of polished metal (brass or
bronze) and then covered with patina. A metal loop is placed on the inside
from which the mirror can be hung. The indigenous mirror of Inner Asia is
usually undecorated. Those manufactured in China have various depictions
which include animals, the five elements and themes from Chinese mythology.
China, in particular, had a great tradition in producing and exporting metallic
mirrors, especially bronze. Those mirrors were mainly used for ritual purposes
in China – for burials, ancestral worship or as gifts in weddings. But there
is a type of Chinese mirror known as a magic mirror or more precisely as
a ‘light penetrating mirror’ (tou guang jing). Exposed to light, the characters
and images on the back of such a mirror would reflect on the wall, as if they
can pass through it.10 Humphrey states that probably indigenous mirrors of
south Siberian-Mongolian region predate those manufactured in China. ‘For
Mongols, however, the “ancientness” of shaman’s mirrors points not to their
particular historical or geographical origins but to the timeless, ‘always-ness’
of shamanic practice among humans’.11
All shamanic mirrors in Mongolia have a rather blotchy and murky surface,
slightly curved, able to produce a dim, distorted image. No matter how polished
its shiny side is, the reflection the shaman’s mirror produces is always clouded.12
Still, the word toli is used to describe both the household glass mirror and the
shamanic mirror. The word means encyclopaedia or a place for the storage of
knowledge. The use of the same word indicates that, in theory, even without
glass the shaman’s mirror can dazzle the eye, cast light and reflect things in it.13
 The gaze of the shaman 83

Because the reflection offered by the toli is distorted and clouded, Humphrey
writes, the mirror of the shaman is in itself a challenge as to what constitutes a
reflection. What one sees inside the toli is defined by who is looking.
Like the mirrors all over the world, the shamanic mirror has two distinctive
sides: one polished and a dull, insipid one. What is most striking, however,
about the Mongolian mirror is that both of its sides are in use. The polished
one for reflecting things and the other side as a portal to a darker world: the
world of the dead. Now, how does that world look like? To the living, it is a
world deprived of light. Nothing really exists there, neither life and beauty nor
happiness and destiny. It is a dark void where everything becomes lost. Beams
of light, which are the souls of the dead, occasionally light up the darkness.
The land of the dead, which is identical to our own apart from its obscurity, is
visible only to shamans in trance and to people in dreaming, but only shamans
may purposefully venture in and out of that world through their mirrors.
Shamans journey the dark world bravely but with caution, sometimes bringing
messages to the dead from the living or delivering wishes and counsel from
the dead to the sunny world. There is a variety of spirit-like beings. Chthonic
spirits, Humphrey states, might take residence in water, rocks, trees, ancestors
and shamans. There are also malevolent lesser beings that sometimes originate
of human souls and none of them establish a unified category. Shamans in
Darhad and Horcin, nevertheless, deal mostly with ongons, powerful spirits
thought to be the souls of the once-living people that died under tragic and
extraordinary circumstances or had lived in them. Therefore, they might be
angry, unsatisfied or wanting to take revenge. Mongolian spirits like these
cannot be countless or endlessly shifting shapes. They are counted for, reside
in specific places and have known narratives.
So, on the other side of the mirror, ‘there seem to be degrees of human-
focused intensity. There are varied, nameless, running, floating, wriggling
invisible powers, which are the activations of countless spirits as well as impure
objects, unknown corpses and maleficent curses.’14 But there are also shamans’
ongons, named and familiar, and people dare not to neglect them. If they do, a
shaman ongon might become malignant and bring misfortune and pain to the
community. On the other hand, if people take care of them through constant
offerings and rituals, shamans’ ongons can provide good fortune, health and
fertility. In Mongolia ghosts are not exactly nonhumans. They may have
84 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

supernatural powers like immortality, invisibility, multiplicity – they can even

become human again, for a while, possessing a human body. Spirits change
shapes and can move constantly through special tracks called güidel without
leaving a trace, but they are still the souls of former human beings and so
they share the same psychology. That means they have feelings. The dead in
Mongolia can be happy or sad, angry or frightened. They eat and drink and,
like people, they need company. Not to be lonely, spirits may snatch living
souls to be with them.
In a world where countless spirits lurk on the other side of the mirror, the
borders between life and death are, according to Humphrey, not clearly set.
There is death which is not absolute death and life which is not exactly life.
Dreaming, for instance, is a time when body and soul temporarily separate;
illness is also a period of similar division. It is considered natural that the soul
of a person is not constantly with them. It may travel away from the body,
wonder around and pay visits to other spirits. If the soul will not return,
the person dies. Apparently, hazy borders cannot guarantee one’s protection
from the potential intrusion of the supernatural. Interactions are more than
possible: they are inevitable. A curious space between life and death has been
created in the absence of firm boundaries, and in that space the living are
vulnerable. The soul of a person might have an unfortunate encounter with a
vengeful spirit as it travels far from its body or is captured by a lonely ghost.
Actually, Mongols think that each human being has many souls. Three is the
number believed by many to be the most accurate. Every person has three
souls: one perishes with the physical body; another lingers after death around
the body and the world of the living, but only for a while. The third soul may
pass after death to the other world or choose to be reborn as an infant.
As the borders of life and death are not closed from either side, a person can
be dead but not quite so or alive but not really. An aliveness that is not alive
might mean a man or woman possessed by a spirit. Almost dead, somewhat
dead, might imply a person whose soul is indeed away from its physical body
and so it appears to be dead, but the soul may not be far or irretrievably away.
A shaman will be called for the soul to be rescued, retrieved and reclaimed.
To mediate the space between life and death, the shaman will use and depend
on their mirror. The mirror will be the portal, the armour and the weapon.
Sometimes it may even be the vessel on which the shaman will fly to battle.
 The gaze of the shaman 85

Portal, weapon, shield

The shamanic mirror has the ability to move and affect lives, to destroy or
reveal psychic energy. Sometimes, as Humphrey suggests citing Otgony Purev,
it can even seem to mysteriously act on its own.15 The mirror has a spirit given
to it by blood. In a rite called amiluulah, a spirit passes into the mirror’s metal.
A sheep or goat is slaughtered, a spirit is called and the mirror is then dipped
into the blood for the spirit to pass in it and give it life.
A shaman makes sure that every three years the mirror is ‘blooded’ to keep
on living. The spirit nests in the inner side of the mirror, along with other
invited spirits or even the spirit of the possessed shaman. Thus, the mirror is
a portal and a container. Then, the mirror travels. It roams under the earth or
rolls by itself on its surface, cutting through paths and roads in a mysterious
cross-way manner called hündelen yavan.16 The mirror can also offer a ride to
its shaman and to other spirits. Its curved side is now offered for souls to ride
as if on a boat.
As souls and possessed shamans ride on mirrors and vengeful ghosts venture
among the living, people need protection: someone to negotiate constantly the
fragile relationship of the living and the dead and travel the vast expanse of the
dark world. That person is the shaman. Viveiros de Castro defined shamanism
as ‘the capacity evinced by some individuals to cross ontological boundaries
deliberately and adopt the perspective of nonhuman subjectivities in order
to administer the relations between humans and nonhumans’.17 Humphrey
claims that if we substitute the word ‘nonhumans’ with the word ‘spirits’,
the description fits perfectly the Mongolian shaman. She describes how the
shaman mediates the two worlds using his or her mirror for divination and
as a vital part of their performance. During their rites, shamans wore their
mirrors like armour. He or she places them on and around their bodies having
the polished side facing outwards. Often, they use several mirrors, as is the
case with the Daurs who use a heart mirror worn in front of their bodies
and another one worn on their backs. The number of mirrors shamans use is
indicative of their powers and they can have up to thirteen. As they perform
they are located within their mirrors. So, the mirrors contain the shamans as
well as guard them against evil forces. The mirror repels curses and attacks
from enemy spirits, and, in that case, it is thought to act as a shield.
86 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

To travel the dark world of the dead, shamans perform mostly at night. They
do so with their eyes closed in order to see as spirits, adopting their point of
view. ‘In the country of the blind, one should close one’s eyes, in the land of the
lame, one should walk with a bent leg.’18 Closing their eyes shamans concentrate
their power, resist desire and adopt the position of the spirits they are about to
encounter. But not all of them do. Sometimes, shamans in a trance keep their
eyes open, and when they do, their eyes are considered extremely dangerous.
The eyes of the shamans are possessed by spirits. They are capable of emitting
frightening rays of light and their gaze can be damaging to ordinary people.
In the Horchin area shamans hide their eyes behind a black cloth to protect
the people around them.19 In fact, Mongols relate the eyes of the shaman with
the mirror: both have the power to absorb things from the outside, store them
inside them and then cast them out again. Open or closed, the shaman’s eyes
do not see. It is the mirror that ‘sees’. In fact, as we read in Humphrey’s work,
the shaman might even be travelling with his or her eyes closed and still be
able to see adopting the position of the spirit inside the mirror. As the mirror
becomes a weapon casting flashes of light, so become the eyes of the shaman.
The eyes become the mirror, and the mirror becomes the eyes. The shaman’s
gaze is, therefore, the gaze of the mirror.
Perhaps, hiding the shaman’s eyes behind a cloth falls under the same
principle, and offers the same protection, as when a household glass mirror is
covered up during a death in the family. Still, operating from both of its sides,
the Mongolian mirror is not to be trusted. If a corpse is reflected in it, the soul of
the dead person can be trapped inside. The dead person from inside the mirror
will then be able to gaze outside of it and watch his or her family, becoming
thus unwilling to abandon the world of the living.20 In the same manner but
from the other side, living people might look in the mirror and catch images of
the world of the dead. The mirror, therefore, with its dual function, is thought
to provide glimpses of what is through or behind it; it does not end at its back
side. On the contrary, a whole world lies on the other side of the mirror. That
world sometimes opens up even to the gaze of ordinary people. To transport
the Mongolian mirror into Carroll’s novels, a ‘real’ Alice could accidentally ‘step
through’ a shamanic mirror. Only the world she would have encountered might
have been terrifying. And it wouldn’t have been a dream. Or better still, since
the soul is considered in Mongolia to travel during sleep in the transcendental
land beyond the mirror, her dream would be much real.
 The gaze of the shaman 87

When someone dies in Mongolia, Humphrey writes, a shaman might be

called to try to travel the darkness and bring back the soul of the departed, but
if that proves impossible, final death arrives and the body starts to disintegrate.
Yet, some souls do not depart. They become ghosts and haunt the living. Other
souls turn to ongon spirits. Such transformations take time to be accomplished.
The flesh on the corpse should vanish completely and the shaman would then
be called to perform rites in which the spirit would be recognized and named.
In future rites, the spirit might be summoned to aid the living. However, not
all spirits are kind and willing to help. Some may attack, and, in such a case,
the shamanic mirror becomes a weapon protecting its owner. To fight off
enemies, the mirror emanates flashes of dazzling light. Spirits are also made of
light and fight by it. They are visible to shamans as illuminations surrounded
by absolute darkness and attack mostly during the night.
Mongolia is a place of contrasting light and darkness, the light belongs to
the living and the darkness is the realm of the dead. The night, thus, is a time
when the universe is out of balance – now the living are in the dark – and the
living are more vulnerable for it.21 The light spirits emanate may be blue, white
or red. It is never a normal kind of light. Shamans are always able to see the
light of spirits. Ordinary people do not. Yet, the light of the mirror is sometimes
visible to everyone: when mirrors are travelling distances on their own, they
appear blazing. The mirror is not only a weapon. It is also an instrument of
healing. For instance, the shaman may wipe the smooth side of the mirror on
the body of an ill person to restore health. Nevertheless, the shamanic mirror
can be sent from far away to cause great harm.

Daunting mirror

There was once a young man in Mongolia who quarrelled with a shaman. The
two men lived in distant villages. The shaman sent his mirror to attack and
punish the young man. The mirror flew through the night sky, found the house
of the young man in his far away village and entered it through the window.
The young man though was prepared. He was awake waiting, and even though
he could not see the mirror he saw a blue light coming into the house. Because
the man was strong and ready the mirror did not assault him. Instead, the
mirror sensed weakness in his wife who was at that time asleep in the same
88 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

room. The man saw the blue light sitting on his wife and his wife died. The
next morning the man put his dead woman in a cupboard (which he used as
a coffin) and took her to the countryside. But the shaman did not let it end
there. Every night he went to the woman’s resting place, beating his drum and
performing on top of her coffin in order to steal her spirit.
Unable to tolerate the shaman’s behaviour any longer, and seeking revenge,
the young man secretly removed the body of his dead wife from her coffin. He
took its place inside it, waiting for the shaman to come. Indeed, the shaman
returned as he did every night and started performing and chanting. Abruptly,
the young man jumped out of the coffin and attacked. The shaman was so
frightened that he fell ill and died with his heart broken. But the young’s man
fate was not much better. Because he spent the night in a coffin, he became
mad. Nobody won. The story of the feud between the young, bold man and
the shaman was told to Humphrey by Hürelbaatar (as Humphrey states in her
article) and it concerns the people of the Horchin region. It points the use of
the mirror as shaman’s weapon. Also, it highlights the visibility of the mirror
as a blue light, its ability to fly, its willingness to act at the shaman’s commands,
and of course, the danger of death and madness inevitably involved with the
shamanic mirror. The story hints at the real hazard associated with mirrors
and meddling with concepts such as life and death (the young man loses his
mind because he takes the place of a dead person in the coffin while being
alive). Understandably, people are very reluctant to look in a shamanic mirror
or having it placed inside their home – if a shaman could die as a result of
interacting with his mirror, imagine what could happen to an ordinary person.
A better place for a shamanic mirror is sometimes considered to be outside the
house, above the doorway, for the mirror to repel curses and misfortune. Still,
even in such cases, the mirror would be wrapped in cloth.
Mongolia is not the only place where people demonstrate fear in the
presence or use of a mirror. An intercultural association of the mirror with
the supernatural is hard not to be noticed: the mirror acting as a portal to a
different, darker world, or nesting malevolent spirits and monsters inside its
depths. Stories compete with each other to prove it. Even far from the shamans
of Mongolia, we come across superstitious narratives in which the mirror is
potentially harmful. The seven years of bad luck upon the breaking of the
mirror, the dangers of looking into a mirror after dark, the images of the dead
 The gaze of the shaman 89

that may very well appear in the mirror on New Year Eve, all have to do with an
unworldly association of the mirror and the human soul. The breaking of the
mirror brings seven unfortunate years because the mirror reflects one’s soul
and so, along with the glass, the soul is broken to pieces. It takes seven years
for a soul to heal, so, the person whose mirror is broken will be safe again in
the same amount of time. It is said that grinding the mirror into dust, burying
the mirror or tapping the broken mirror on a gravestone is said to prevent the
bad luck.22
But who said it?
Perhaps instinctively, we attribute dangerous qualities to our own self-
inspection. We make up stories that seem to cut across cultures and their origins
are hard to trace.23 In ancient Greece the mirror was forbidden to men, at least,
for self-inspecting reasons.24 The mirror was considered to be a dangerous
object as it might entrap a man into himself – as it happened to Narcissus –
or turn him into an object, a thing, through the inevitable identification of
one’s self with one’s self-reflection. Clearly, a man’s role was to be a sociable
and extrovert being. Self-inspection in a mirror and self-beautification in
front of a mirror, therefore, were considered to be inferior, dangerous and vain
behaviours adequate only for women. The mirror was granted only to women
because, as Francoise Frontisi-Ducroux and Jean-Pierre Vernant write, their
fate was entrapment – in a man’s house and in their roles as wives or daughters.
So, to be objectified through the act of looking in the mirror was, for women,
almost natural. Furthermore, becoming entrapped in the mirror adequately
reflected a woman’s destiny. The mirror and the short-sighted view of the
world it offers to its observer belonged to women, since men had to be able to
look beyond their noses – out into society and their fellow citizens.
The main metaphor for the mirror’s entrapment was that of the maze or the
labyrinth. ‘Like the mirror, the labyrinth originates in a paradoxical negation:
it is a path that, literally going nowhere, is essentially pathless.’25 The victim of
a labyrinth, Willard McCarty writes, is forced or beguiled to repeat the same
movement, either physically or imaginatively. Thus, the victim is trapped.
McCarty claims that catoptric fascination works in a similar fashion: by offering
to the observer immediate repetition of their movements it encourages the
same aimless ‘wondering’. For McCarty, movement can be seen as a metaphor
for thought, so, ‘the labyrinth can be regarded as the outer form of the victim’s
90 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

inner state, his confusion of mind. Thus we can speak of the catoptric labyrinth
and the labyrinthine mirror.’26
We have referred many times in this book to an idea repeatedly connected
with the mirror: that of a world existing through and beyond it. McCarty
leads us there again by discussing Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius and
his likening of the mirror observer with a man in a house gazing through an
opening to a reality beyond.27 Lucretius’s metaphor, according to McCarty,
perfectly encapsulates the main view of the mirror in antiquity as a portal
into a world beyond human vision and reach. More interestingly, McCarty
points out that Lucretius, with his metaphor, underlines the occurrence of an
individual being aware of gazing out ‘from the bony house of the skull into a
world reachable only through the senses. Thus, paradoxically, the metaphor
suggests not only access to the interior world of essences but also entrapment
within the limits of the self.’28
Because of this negative attitude towards the mirror as an instrument of
entrapment, men were not supposed to use it. McCarty provides us with the
case of Apuleius who had to defend himself, in the middle of the second-
century AD, for using a mirror by referring to its value in terms of self-
knowledge. Mirror gazing, on the other hand, was appropriated to women
mostly for beautification and erotic purposes. As always, outlandish stories
followed the use of the mirror. Aristotle offers a detailed and curious account
on the relationship between the mirror and the female body.29 When women
are looking into the mirror while having their periods, Aristotle claims, a sort
of bloody cloud appears on the looking-glass. That bloody stain is not easy
to be removed from the mirror, especially if the mirror is brand new. That
happens because the eyes of a woman, just like any other organ of the female
body, have veins. So, during a menstrual flow, the female eyes, like the rest of
her organs, change and become infected with blood – a change not visible to
other people. The eyes, consequently, set the air in motion and act upon it by
causing it to do the same thing (an inflammation of blood) that they endure.
That happens because the eyes are shiny so they are not only influenced by the
air, but, in return, can affect the air. The layer of air which exists on top of the
mirror’s surface, then, in its turn, influences the mirror, thus the bloody mist
on its surface.
 The gaze of the shaman 91

To put it simply, according to Aristotle, a woman transmits the blood

of her menstrual flow through her eyes, into the air, and then onto the
mirror in which she gazes. The blood stain of the female menstrual flow
that is transmitted on the mirror’s surface, through her gaze, is not easy to
be cleaned because it penetrates the mirror deeply and in every direction.
The smoother the mirror, the worse will be the stain. Consistent with this
theory, the gaze acts as it is acted upon. Pliny, the Roman naturalist, agrees
that Aristotle’s views were commonplace in his time. In his work he also
mentions that, if a woman gazes in a mirror while having her menstrual flow,
the brightness of the mirror would be affected and its glass would become
foggy.30 Nevertheless, if the woman looks again in the mirror on its back side,
the mirror regains its shine. So, the female gaze acts in the opposite direction
and removes the mist from the mirror, just like a hammer would do, striking
the metal from the opposite direction. For Aristotle and Pliny, a woman’s gaze
during menstruation carried her blood through the air in tiny red particles.
The female bloody gaze was, therefore, a well-kept secret that only mirror
could reveal. In essence, what the mirror made visible, once a woman’s gaze
fells upon it, was her womb.

A dark glimpse

The mirror does not provoke fear, excitement or unease, solely because of
metaphysical association and outlandish stories. That the mirror reveals the
unseen is an obvious fact. We do not have to consider ghosts and spirit-worlds,
but merely our own face, visible to us only through our mirror reflection. The
reason an ordinary person in Mongolia finds the experience of looking in
reflecting surfaces uncomfortable enough is, primarily, not that different to our
own. According to Humphrey, it has to do with one’s complicated relationship
with one’s self and the relationship of self and other.31 Mirrors ‘problematise
looking and touching, image and substance …’32 The following Mongolian
riddle gives indications of the trouble nature of these relations:
It makes one into two
Nameless and white.33
92 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

Indeed, ‘Nameless and white’, can easily come to mind when pondering on
a mirror’s reflection. It suggests, if we attempt an interpretation of our own, the
division between self and mirrored self. It also points to the loss of personal
identity one suffers in front of the mirror, as the living body becomes a thing:
a reflection without name.
Still, the distinct quality of the Mongolian shamanic mirror does not lie in
what is actually seen in its hardly polished, reflective surface. As Humphrey
points out, the mirror ‘disturbs and places under question what “seeing”
and “reflecting” are … the shaman’s mirror is an instrument whose design
encourages a progression of thoughts: looking at, looking into, and looking
through (the mirror).’34 So, while the Mongolian mirror puzzles the relationship
of self and mirroring as much as any other mirror, it is also there to give us
hints, to make us look differently. We believe that it suggests an alternative
way of gazing. What one sees on its surface is not a clear fact – the ‘silver and
precise’ reflection of Sylvia Plath’s mirror. On the contrary, Mongolian mirrors
are made to give reflections that are unique and unclear, therefore, open to
interpretation.
What needs to be interpreted is not necessarily the reflection of a human
body. According to anthropologist Katherine Swancutt,35 during mirror
divinations in Bayandun, shamans, after murmuring invocations to spirits,
pour vodka on their mirrors and exhale over them. Then, together with the
people who are gathered there, they try to make out and interpret the filmy
shape that appears on the mirrors once the vodka dries out.36 Understandably,
the shape is rarely as apparent as to be beyond debate. The people, though,
need to understand what kind of being is evident in the shape, so as to know
which spirit is responsible for their misfortunes. The shamans in Horchin,
on the other hand, do not use vodka or any other liquid but simply stare
into the mirror. The purpose, as always, is to see beyond the hazy reflections
of the polished metal: to see through. With luck, beings on the other side of
the mirror can become visible. In rare occasions, the spirit-world may open up
even to the gaze of ordinary people. This is called ‘to glimpse through a glass
darkly’.37
Now, what might be revealed through such mirror gazes? The whole point
is, of course, to see something that we weren’t supposed to see; something that,
by all means, shouldn’t have been there – an impossibility that will create the
 The gaze of the shaman 93

link to ‘prospective possibilities, producing the basis for innovations which

initially appear to arise out of nothing’.38 This might be a reflection or a stain
far from perfect, that would make one think for a long time and will initiate, as
Swancutt tells us, ‘a process of innovation wherein repeated questioning leads
to combinatory thought which imposes novel combinations on people, who
perceive the need for innovation, access an innovation, and finally recursively
posit that innovation’s conceptual origins’.39 In a way, the Mongolian mirror
is a mirror only in principle. It becomes a conceptual mirror. Enigmatic and
utterly obscure, it mostly offers, we think, a guess at shapes. Unlike the mirror
we are used to, we are now face to face with a ‘secretive’ object made of a dimly
reflective substance that affords traces of meaning to be discovered, rather
than reflections to be seen. That is to have reached a point where not only the
reflection of our face is not of any particular importance, but the point where
a definite and clear mirroring becomes a burden.

Hazy shapes and metaphors

For the Mongolians who performed the mirror divination of the previous
example, the vodka left a trace on the mirror that, at first glance, looked
like a bird to Swancutt.40 Yet, as she writes, her interpretation was disputed
by Galanjav, the head of one of the allied families who feared that shamans
from rival families had put a curse on them. Other family members, however,
took Swancutt’s interpretation into account during a second reading which
revealed the shape of the lama-shaman (a shaman from a rival family). The
conclusion reached combined the initial suspicion of the curse with the shape
of the bird in what Swancutt calls ‘combinatory thought’41 – a less restrictive
way of thinking that allows for innovation and novel combination: The lama-
shaman had used a nature spirit (in the form of a chicken) to cause harm. So,
while a hazy shape can invite various meanings, it can only have one right
meaning for a specific person or occasion: a meaning that will lead to problem
solving. Reading Swancutt’s ethnography we might assume that looking, in
this instance, has less to do with seeing and more with realizing, with building
up sense. And for the purpose of our chapter, keep in mind that the Mongolian
mirror hints at interpreting a reflection by thinking beyond the mirror’s frame.
94 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

What we ‘see’ does not necessarily have to be on the mirror’s surface. To gaze
in the mirror is to explore a multiplicity and variety of possibilities: meaning
that comes in many forms.
What we learn here is nothing less than an alternative way of looking
into the mirror. To experiment with it, we decided to look in a mirror
(the ‘mirror’ here can be any shiny, reflective surface, also, an old mirror
would be better than a new one) trying to interpret anything that exists on
it, other than our faces. Unlike the Buryats we live in a world where the
borders between life and death, spirits and persons, are clearly defined and
impenetrable. For us, to gaze in our imaginary Mongolian mirror is to be
searching for a metaphor; an ‘as if ’ that would bestow us with vision beyond
reflection. So, we gazed in the mirror not to see our reflection, but to see
beyond and through it. The experiment was simple: we looked for any shape
except of our own faces.
Exploring the metaphor-building potential of mirror gazing, ‘glimpsing
darkly’ in the mirror produced, for us, an unclear, diaphanous silhouette: an
old, foggy stain that we noticed at the left corner of the glass. We tried several
interpretations. Some seemed unfit or irrelevant. We skipped them. Finally, a
shape became certain: that is, certain to us and for the purpose of this book.
One shape cannot fit all. Everyone is invited to take part in this mirror-gazing
experiment, to find their own metaphor and reach meaning through their
own mirror-gazing experience. Nevertheless, our metaphor took the shape of
a deer – an elegant, red deer, like the ones native to Scotland, or perhaps to the
Caucasus Mountains and Asia.
The deer was trapped. It had been captured inside our mirror with no
way to escape. It looked unaware of its entrapment, strong and at the same
time vulnerable. To be honest, that was hardly surprising. A deer had been
stubbornly following us for a while now. In the introduction of this book,
it hesitantly approached the mirror we deliberately placed in the middle
of a forest. It stood there for a while facing its reflection. In Chapter 4, it
was waiting for us in a world without names, without a clear ‘I’. It helped
us to realize that, in such a world, we could have existed together without
fear. Later on, the deer appeared unexpectedly in the mirror as we were
staring purposefully in it. It looked as surprised to be there as we were to
 The gaze of the shaman 95

find it. So, the deer had been tracing us, in one way or another, buried up
to its neck in the lines of this book. It will later become clear why a deer,
an animal of prey, appeared trapped in our mirror as we were looking for a
metaphor. In this chapter, however, the captured deer is dead. But not quite.
The Mongolian mirror operates in a place where the line between life and
death is indiscernible. So, we interpreted the shape in the mirror as a deer
that belongs to the world of the dead, but also has a presence in the world of
the living: a deer in a natural history museum, dead, but not entirely non-
existent.
More precisely, the deer that came to our minds looking in the mirror
was one we had visited in Oxford’s Natural History museum: a red stag that
used to stand at the entrance’s right side, along with a leopard and a brown
bear. It used to be standing there, proud and tall and dead, for all the visitors
to see – a sign next to it read: please touch. We did touch. The deer’s fur was
soft but eerie cold. The presence of that deer, like any animal in a natural
history museum, was confusing. Even though lifeless, it had a physical
presence which was undeniable. Its image testified to an animal staring in
the distance as if ready to move. It looked like a living deer. The children
around it approached and touched it merrily in a way they would never treat
a corpse. But in the end, no matter how alive it looked, or how beautiful,
it was just that: a corpse. To paraphrase our next Mongolian riddle: if you
looked, it was like a deer; if you thought about it, it was like a corpse. This
brings us to our next point.

Thinking dead

If you look, it is like a person.

If you think, it is like a corpse.42

We find the distinction of the above riddle between the ‘looker’ and the
‘thinker’ when it comes to a mirror observer particularly telling. First of all, it
connects to the point we try to make in this book: the distinction between the
one who just looks into the mirror and the one who thinks deeply with and
through it. Moreover, it expresses the possibility of discovering new modes of
96 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

existence through mirror gazing. For the Mongolian shamans, in particular,

the riddle can take a literal meaning. The dead (spirits or ghosts) may appear
in the mirror for the thinker (the shaman, we might assume, as opposed to
the ordinary person) as unfamiliar possibilities become thinkable in the new
place in which the shamanic mirror operates. In that horizon, according to
Humphrey, the system of physical existence with its laws and regulations ceases
to function. Things that appear in the mirror have different, hidden meanings.
What is at issue, Humphrey observes, is nothing less than the ‘eternal question
of the truth of being’.43 It is one thing, Humphrey continues, to accept the
existence of many perspectives (of animals, of people, of the dead) and quite
another to accept that those statements are equal or that any of them says
something true. That possibility is horrifying. For if the perspective of the
dead in the land beyond the mirror holds any value, then, the living (us) might
as well be red worms, inhabiting a world of darkness. In addition, to extend
Humphrey’s line of thought to a previous chapter of our book and to the
realms of literature, perhaps the possibility of an alien perspective being true
holds the same agony that overcame Alice when Tweedledum and Tweedledee
happily suggested to her, as they watched the comical figure of the snoring
Red King, that she might not be real, and that she only exists inside the Red
King’s dream.
Away from Mongolia and into our modern world, however, we do not suffer
such agonies. There are no ghosts inside our mirrors. Dead people do not roam
on the other side of its glass. And yet, our mirror might still have something to
say to a ‘thinker’ about death. That is, it might reflect what we believe about our
death and the meaning it has for us. We are referring to the prospect of how
we think about the mirror shapes, in some respect, the way we think of our
existence. So, perhaps there might be opportunities to gain knowledge from a
corpse inside our household mirror without breaking our ontological borders
or escaping into the world of fiction. Such an opportunity is well illustrated by
philosopher Raymond Tallis in his book The Black Mirror.44 Tallis has a simple
proposition for his reader. To explain it, he is talking to himself, and he calls
himself ‘RT’. In fact, while looking into the mirror, Tallis is talking to his future
corpse. He invites us to do the same. Naked in front of the looking-glass, Tallis
sees an image that is ‘an earlier time-slice of the item that will be your corpse,
a time slice that, unlike the later one, is looking back at you’.45
 The gaze of the shaman 97

In front of the mirror Tallis contemplates on his future corpse. The body
that is facing him, as he stands in front the mirror, is indeed the one that
would be shown to whoever comes to pay their last respect in the event of
his death. It is the body that, as Tallis imagines, will be lifted by nurses and
laid down in that special place in the hospital. The body from which any
personal items will be removed: eye glasses, wedding rings, watches – a
body beyond and out of time. What had once been a person is, under Tallis’
gaze, now transformed into an ‘it’, alone and deprived of everything, absent
and cold. Nurses will eventually wash that body one last time, making sure
they attend all rules of hygiene. Its hair will be brushed, its teeth will be
washed, the arms – that very arms we see in front of us in the mirror will
be lifted and folded across the chest. The hands will be clasped together;
the eyes will be closed. The idea of the Black Mirror is to be awakened by
death and appreciate having an embodied self and a conscious existence.
RT is looking at his mirrored self and sees the very lifeless head that will
be lifted up on a pillow, the chin that will be propped up ‘to prevent the
mouth falling open in a silent scream’46 and the lips that a nurse will coat
with Vaseline to keep them moist as the tongue is now useless. The very feet
that are always aware of the body’s weight as we stand in front of the mirror
will be unable to feel anything, their connection to the environment forever
severed and lost. Their last step taken.
Tallis considers death as the ultimate certainty of life. The reflection of
his corpse in the mirror reminds him of the long process between birth and
death – the inevitability of death casting an ironic shadow on the deep worries
and endless preoccupations of life. He thinks of his parents. How many times
and on how many different occasions they were concerned about him. His
parents worrying through his childhood: bed-time stories, illnesses, nutrition,
safety. Then, the schooling years, exams, bullying, grades, successes and
failures, married years, professional career: all those long periods of detailed
anxieties leading nowhere but to an upward road towards the edge of a cliff.
Parents tell their children to keep away from edges, RT contemplates, and yet
one day the edge will come for us and for our children just the same. The
absolute nothingness that follows is beyond comprehension. We may try to
think of it as we stare at our reflection. Gazing into the eyes that one day will
be gaze-less.
98 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

All that insight Tallis gains from the ‘dead’ in the mirror. Instead of
communicating with spirits, as a shaman might do, Tallis simply imagines
himself dead. The mirror, in any context, is an object to think with, through
and about. RT’s mirror gaze offers a deep thinking of death and of what it
steals from the living, but it also suggests, even unintentionally, a way in which
a ‘modern’ mirror could be inhabited by the dead: what in the future will be
our corpse, the same eyes, the same face, is looking at us through the looking-
glass. And this is where the story ends. It ends there because our modern
mirror terminates on the wall on which it hangs. There is absolutely nothing
beyond the mirror and, therefore, death brings about an absolute nothingness.
We think through things and imagine through them. Tallis’s black mirror, our
mirror, with its rigid borders, affords very little in terms of imagining a horizon
that exists after death for us to step into. Truth is, if we thought of our mirror as
a portal, a potential doorway to the world of the dead, Tallis’s narrative would
be different. His death, in his mind, would be different.

Lonely glass

Now let’s think a bit more of Tallis’s narrative. Tallis invites us to find our future
corpse in the mirror: to imagine our mirrored body lifeless, emotionless,
joyless, breathless, selfless. But do we really have to use our imagination in
order to see a dead thing in the mirror? Tallis’s imaginary view of his future
corpse points to what the mirror does to all of us anyway: turns us into
objects. Tallis describes the transition from life to death as a long journey
from I-hood to object-hood. Still, looking into the mirror is a very short
journey from ‘I’ to ‘it’. In other words, inside our mirror we die every day. We
do not have to imagine our future corpses to see a reflection with no pulse, no
blood and no organs. By definition, a mirror reflection is lifeless. This might
not be something we take notice of, or contemplate on, but it happens every
time we turn our gaze at the looking-glass – an unceremonious transition
from a felt, embodied self, an ‘I’, into a thing, an ‘it’. Unlike the mirrors of
Mongolia, our mirror is made specifically to reflect our face, as clearly as it
can be done. We do not use the mirror to envisage ideas of personhood or to
interpret shapes, but to find a cloudless, lifeless mirrored body. In a way, our
 The gaze of the shaman 99

mirror guides us to identify with our future corpse. It coaches us to become

a spiritless object.
Another distinctive difference: our mirror is not borderless. In contrast to
the shamanic mirror, it ends abruptly at its back side. Only the front side of
our mirror is in use and past that side, there is no door to another world. Our
modern mirror provides a cruel border: not one that separates two things, but
a border with nothing beyond. Standing in front of it, the world is all about us
and in it we are alone. The phenomenology of our mirror imposes and, at the
same time, reflects faithfully the borders marked on our existence: in finality,
our mirror and our death reflect each other. For the Buryats of Mongolia, the
end of the mirror, its back side, is also the beginning of the world of the dead.
Accordingly, death is considered to be the start of another kind of existence:
the beginning of an infinite life in an alternate universe.
The Mongolian mirror reflects an open ending. In comparison, our own
mirror stands deprived of spirits, of ‘beneath’, or ‘beyond’. It is a lonely glass,
sanitized of souls and ghosts clinically reflecting our bodies. Of course, facing
our mirror we are safe – no beaming ongons would stare back at us, no lethal,
enemy mirror can fly towards us from afar with a dark purpose. In short, no
disorienting question about the truth of our existence. Tragic events are not
deposited inside the mirror’s depths to haunt us or expose us in the future.
With our secular mirror we are secure. But there’s nowhere to go. Our safety
is paid for with a definite and unmovable line we cannot extend ourselves
beyond. Modern mirrors offer no escape from life, from death, from self.
There is no release. Death in our mirror is irrevocable. A dead person reflected
in it could never stare back at us, be tempted to stay around us for a little
longer or be free to move on. It would only produce the lifeless reflection of
someone that has already died: a dead in our mirror would be twice as dead.
This is our mirror’s perspective. Since there are no spirits in it, the mirror
can only afford a view through the lifeless eyes of our reflection: no after-life
illusions, no possibility of another land with rivers and forests and ancestors
waiting to welcome us on the other side. In a manner of speaking, and while
we are still alive, we are already the ghosts inside our modern mirror.
100
 Part Three

Hunters and Prey

102
 7

The mirror trap

Self-hunting

This chapter is an invitation to a hunting adventure. It asks of you to think of

mirroring on a par with snaring. That is, to think of the mirror as a device for
the remote capture of prey. First, some things about traps: traps are usually
designed to catch particular animals. They target their habits and predict the
ways they move in the landscape and forge their paths in it. A good trap, like
a good hunter, is adapted to the distinctive features of its prey. Traps are mute;
they do not speak. Yet, they do signify and communicate, in the language of
material signs, information about the animals’ strengths and weaknesses. Traps
enact and objectify relevant parts of the hunter’s knowledge on the animals’
whereabouts and landscaping activities; how they go about to discover food,
mates or water. It is no secret among hunters that the more the trap knows or
remembers about the prey the more effective it is.
There are many kinds of traps as there are different kinds of prey. Prey can
be broadly divided into two categories: aware and unaware prey. Aware prey
denotes animals with knowledge or previous experience of traps as devices
able to ensnare or kill. Unaware prey denotes animals with no such previous
knowledge or understanding. Most animals are unaware victims. Humans can
be both. Self-consciousness seems to be the major criterion of differentiation.
Unfortunately, for prey, traps exist for both kinds. This distinction has very
little to do with the chances that the prey is captured or it escapes. Traps for
animals with a predilection for self-consciousness, however, are different.
What about the mirror then? How exactly does the mirror trap work?
What turns this everyday object into a hunting weapon? What creatures is it
designed to catch? Who is the hunter and what is the prey? The argument we
104 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

want to put forward in this chapter is that mirrors are traps especially designed
for sentient creatures of the self-conscious kind. The major assumption is that
the mirror trap enacts ‘in the wild’ the same basic principles of the so-called
mirror self-recognition test that has been used for studying self-identification
in the laboratories of developmental and animal psychology.1 In other words,
the operation of the mirror trap is grounded on the ability of the mirror to
act as a self-recognition device. We will show that the mirror resembles a
powerful attractor within a dynamic semiotic field of subjectification and self-
identification. Specifically, the mirror trap operates primarily on the basis of
mimesis, enchanting its prey by enacting a deep experiential ‘I see me’/‘me but
not me’ paradox.2 This is why it captures animals with a peculiar disposition or
attraction for self-knowledge. Exactly what sort of knowledge is that? With the
help of ethnography, we shall travel into the forest and try to find out.
Technically, our aim in this chapter, like with the rest of the book, is to
conduct an experiment in comparative philosophical anthropology. We invite
the reader to approach this chapter as an opportunity to grow into a different
understanding of the mirror: a hunting game of projection, participation,
anticipation, mimicry and pretend. Hopefully, this will make for a ‘captivating’
story.

Captured: Traps as mirrors and mirrors as traps

We should start by talking a little more about traps. Perhaps even more
important than understanding why mirrors can be seen to operate as traps
is to see how traps often operate like mirrors. Traditional ethnographic
accounts of hunting tell us that the use of traps is a common worldwide
practice. From a functional point of view the making and setting of traps or
snares is relatively simple. Yet, the idea of remote capture that those humble
technologies embody is a complex one. Traps are more than smart hunting
automata. The process of entrapment as a mode of material engagement
and enactive signification, that is, a co-habitation through matter3 between
the hunter and the prey, can potentially expose relations of broader
anthropological significance. The anthropologists Alberto Corsín Jiménez
and Chloe Nahum-Claudel reviewing three major types of ethnographic
 The Mirror Trap 105

narratives of trapping, namely, animistic, ecological and relational, propose

that traps and notions of trapping can offer a useful anthropological heuristic
for exploring the recursive entanglements of materiality, ecology and social
life. The following eloquent description of trapping captures the heart of the
matter:

Traps are designed to mobilize, assemble and orient the circulation of

energy in specific directions.… Bodies move in and out of traps, but it is
not always clear whose body will be trapped and what exactly traps embody.
Traps function thus as passageways for the circulation of ‘endo- and exo-
energies’.… They work as at once conductors and insulators of connectivity,
accelerators and decelerators of mutuality or estrangement; as entrapments
that body forth promissory but also dangerous worlds. (p. 15)4

Of course, no one has expressed better the semiotic complexity and

metaphysical significance of traps than Alfred Gell, whose work we would
like to quote here at some length. Gell’s particular take on the agency of traps
is guided by his radical anthropological reconceptualization of what art is
and does that allow him a novel appreciation of traps as embodiments of
complex intentionalities and thus, potentially artworks. Still, developing
his case of traps as artworks and artworks as traps, he makes many valuable
points of particular relevance to our own present concern to develop an
argument of traps as mirrors and mirrors as traps.
Take an arrow trap from Africa. At a basic level, the trap operates by mere
association and substitution. The arrow trap is a substitute of its creator; it
becomes a surrogate hunter, translating into its material design its owner’s
hunting skills. Gell likens it to an ‘automaton or robot’. The trap, he writes,
is ‘equipped with a rudimentary sensory transducer (the cord, sensitive to
the animal’s touch). This afferent nervous system brings information to the
automaton’s central processor (the trigger mechanism, a switch, the basis of all
information-processing devices) which activates the efferent system, releasing
the energy stored in the bow, which propels the arrows, which produce action-
at-a-distance (the victim’s death)’.5
Obviously, the association between the hunter and the trap that Gell is
seeking to expose in the above description is not one based on mere visual
similarity as with a doll that resembles a person. Instead, it is one based on
106 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

translation where the trap provides a ‘working model’ for the hunter. We use
the term ‘translation’ here to express the mentioned shift or delegation of the
hunter’s knowledge and skills into an artificial ensemble of organized matter,
that is, the arrow trap, which can preserve and carry out the hunting task in his
absence. Interestingly, not only the trap delegates the hunter, it also signifies the
victim. In some cases, traps may simply ‘reflect the outward form of the victim’
or ‘more subtly and abstractly, represent parameters of the animal’s natural
behaviour, which are subverted in order to entrap it’. Indeed, studying the form
of a trap one could infer a great deal about the character and dispositions of
the intended victim. ‘In this sense’, Gell continues, ‘traps can be regarded as
texts on animal behaviour. The trap is therefore both a model of its creator,
the hunter, and a model of its victim, the prey animal. But more than this, the
trap embodies a scenario, which is the dramatic nexus that binds these two
protagonists together, and which aligns them in time and space’.6
Notwithstanding this entanglement between hunter and prey that the trap
objectifies and mediates, there is also a semiotic double bind. To explain: on
the one hand, the arrow trap, like all traps, is designed to be hidden. It can only
fulfil its purpose if passed unnoticed. Traps are inherently secretive. They are
not designed to communicate anything but ‘a deadly absence – the absence
of the man who devised and set it, and the absence of the animal who will
become the victim’.7 On the other hand, the arrow traps, like all traps, because
of these marked absences, function as powerful enactive signs able to signify
without speaking through their material structure: ‘The static violence of the
tensed bow, the congealed malevolence of the arrangement of sticks and cords,
are revelatory in themselves, without recourse to conventionalization. Since
this is a sign that is not, officially, a sign at all, it escapes all censorship. We read
in it the mind of its author and the fate of its victim.’8
A trap, in its thoughtless cruelty, speaks the truth. An arrow trap indeed
signifies the bloody scene which is to follow. It gives away its deadly intentions
without shame or excuses. Another thing about traps is that they relate
information about their creators and also about their future victims. As Alfred
Gell neatly summarizes: ‘Traps are lethal parodies of the animal’s Umwelt.’9
Seen as material signs, traps reveal the habits of their future prey as much as
the needs and limits of the hunters. A trap always gives secrets away. It exposes
the needs and weaknesses of its creator; it takes advantage of the anatomy and
behaviour of prey, and paints a caricature of them both.
 The Mirror Trap 107

The mirror trap is just the same: it subtly points at the inabilities of its
prey as well as of its creator. A human being, the mirror tells us, is not able of
seeing oneself. We may be able to examine parts of our bodies – hands, feet,
the front of our legs – but our face remains a mystery. The back of our bodies
is out of reach. The mirror becomes, thus, our substitute eyes, like an arrow
or a spear becomes a hunter’s substitute hand. That is, the mirror becomes
a prosthesis.10 A technical alliance and alignment of materials, predictions,
movements and life forms. It invites specific actions, fulfils intentions, reveals
predispositions and entails anticipations. But how does it do it? What kind of
energy the mirror trap stores and relays as the capture unfolds? The thing we
should point out first is that the mirror trap embodies a visual ethos of care. It
simultaneously reveals and conceals the victim’s character traits, preferences,
desires, beliefs and motives. Like any other trap, the presence of the mirror
signifies an absence that binds the allure of mirroring with the victim’s need.
However, unlike other traps, the basic motive force that drives (or pulls) the
victim to its entrapment is not pragmatic but rather epistemic. The human
animal falls in the mirror trap not in order to feed its stomach but rather in
order to fulfil a different kind of existential need. It is not hunger or the search
for food but the animal’s habitual quest for identity and self-knowledge that
binds, aligns and entangles bodies and mirrors. The mirror is a trap we set for
answers; it exhumes question marks: who we are, what we look like, how we
appear in the eye of the other.
The knowledge of the self takes time and often comes at a great cost. The
mirror trap works because its ingenious design tricks us to think that we can
acquire that knowledge at a glance. So, the mirror works best for animals
who want to know more. It serves our desire to make sense, to grasp the
knowledge of our self. The problem is that what we recognize as ‘our self ’ in
front of the mirror is an intangible image made of light and glass that mimics
our movement. The mirror image is elusive. It is simultaneously apparent and
transparent, present and absent, self and other. Self-knowledge is hard to come
by and almost impossible to possess entirely. Thus, self-awareness is not always
guaranteed on the mirror’s surface – coming to terms with our ever-changing
image is not always successful: in our effort to capture and study our reflection
sometimes we get entirely caught in the looking-glass.
To illustrate better our last point, we take a small detour. We visit Antoine
Roquentin’s room, the protagonist of Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous novel Nausea.
108 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

Antoine is a young historian whose life seems utterly deprived of meaning.

An illness creeps slowly on him interfering with his ability to define things;
this inability sickens him. He feels nauseous. Antoine cannot even identify
himself. His body, and the working of his body, seem to have become alienated.
Desperate and alone, Antoine wishes for an ‘iota of self-knowledge’11 in order
to make sense of the world. His lack of self-identification becomes unbearable.
Eventually, on a cold Friday, Antoine is lured by the mirror:

I get up. On the wall there is a white hole, the mirror. It is a trap. I know
that I am going to let myself be caught in it. I have. The grey thing has just
appeared in the mirror. I go over and look at it, I can no longer move away.
It is the reflection of my face.12

Caught in the mirror trap Antoine is struggling to create some sort of

personal narrative. He is not successful. The looking-glass reflects Antoine’s
characteristics, and yet, his reading of those signs leads him nowhere. The
story he is supposed to make in front of the looking-glass – about who he
is and what he looks like – fails, words escape him or seem irrelevant: ‘I can
understand nothing about this face’, he admits.13 The mirror reflects, for
Antoine, a shapeless mass of flesh: ‘My gaze travels slowly and wearily down
over this forehead, these cheeks: it meets nothing firm, and sinks into the
sand. Admittedly there is a nose there, two eyes and a mouth, but none of
that has any significance, nor even human expression.’14 Antoine pushes his
face close to the mirror until it touches the glass. ‘The eyes, the nose, the
mouth disappear: nothing human is left … Brown wrinkles on each side of
the feverish swelling of the lips, cervices, mole-hills.’15 The face is discredited,
distorted and fragmented – unable to communicate personal identity. It is a
face put to shame. Antoine wants to destroy it. The face is punished for its
inability to form a person inside the mirror. Still, Antoine keeps returning in
front of the looking-glass and keeps contemplating on his reflection. Despite
of his repeated failures the promise of self-recognition pulls him back into the
mirror trap. Is he ever successful? No, he is not. Instead of finally finding a self,
Antoine’s mirroring loses any trace of humanity. In fact, Antoine remembers
the words of his aunt: ‘“If you look at yourself too long in the mirror, you’ll see
a monkey there.” I must have looked longer than that: what I see is far below
the monkey, on the edge of the vegetable world, at the polyp level.’16
 The Mirror Trap 109

Antoine’s gaze generates a self which is unhitched from its mirrored

reflection. That unhitched self is faceless. It drifts away aimlessly. The nauseous
gaze would not co-operate with the mirror. The mirror throws that gaze back
to Antoine’s face: ‘The eyes in particular, seen at such close quarters, are
horrible. They are glassy, soft, blind, and red-rimmed; anyone would think
they were fish scales.’17 The eyes in the glass are alien to Antoine. They seem
to belong more to the mirror than to him: blind, glass eyes; eyes incapable of
producing vision. The ‘blind’ gaze is the mirror’s answer to Antoine’s misuse of
it. It reflects Deleuse and Guattari’s gazeless eyes18 – a gaze out of focus, blank
and nonsensical. It leads nowhere near self-assurance. It destroys the mirror.
In a way, Antoine and mirror are at war. The notion of the self is the first
casualty. The looking-glass eyes are barren and eerie: white globes ‘on pink,
bleeding flesh’.19 But there is nothing new about them. The gaze’s infertility
becomes boring. Lulled by his monotonous and dreary reflection Antoine
dozes off in front of the mirror. Unable either to escape the looking-glass or to
make sense of his mirrored self, he gives away to sleep. Like an ensnared prey,
Antoine’s attitude changes from misapprehension and agony to surrender.
We borrow this story from Sartre’s famous existential novel for two main
reasons: first, because of what it reveals about the mirror trap and the role it
has in the human existential struggle for self-specification. Second, because
the story carries conviction whether you actually believe or not that Antoine
Roquentin was a real person. As it is usually the case with traps, the mirror
as an object makes no sense in the absence of the gaze of the prey: our gaze,
which is drawn to it with a force we cannot always explain. We, the imaginary
prey of mirrors, feel it clearly as an itch to step forth. Sartre describes that
feeling perfectly through Antoine’s existential drama that eventually leads him
to fall into the ‘white hole’ of the mirror trap.20
The mirror is a subtle trap. It counts on us being smart – on our innate
curiosity that compels us to gaze at our reflection and engage in the complex
relationship of self and self-image. We are captured in the mirror not because
we are naïve but because we are curious. Most of all, the reason we fall in the
mirror trap is we do not see it as a trap; we do not feel anything like prey.
Since the mirror trap does not involve poisonous arrows (at least not in the
literal sense) we have the opportunity of countless glances. If the mirror is
a trap, it is one we escape as many times as we fall in. And still, there is no
110 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

way we could outsmart it. Gell offers us the example of a hippopotamus to

illustrate the sense of false security that leads prey to its trap. Confident in
his sheer strength and bulk, the hippopotamus disregards a rope blocking its
way. The hunter, counting on that attitude, had the rope connected to a lethal
device with a sharp pointy end hanging from the branch of a tree. The scenario
embodied in the trap is easy to read: the hippopotamus will walk across in
defiance, cut the rope and release the deadly device on its head. ‘The fact that
animals who fall victim to traps have always brought about their downfall by
their own actions, their own complacent self-confidence, ensures that trapping
is a far more poetic and tragic form of hunting than the simple chase.’21
A final point: Apart from any pronounced frame, the mirror is almost
indistinguishable from its surroundings, albeit shinier. That is to say, in the
manner of a trap camouflaging into its environment, the mirror excels. At
some point though, the presence of the mirror’s smooth, reflecting surface
becomes clear. That is the moment when everything changes: the moment
that we realize the absence. The looking-glass is ‘empty’. Once we know that
a mirror is placed close to us, the urge to move a little and see our face in it is
almost tangible. There is a tension that lurks in an empty trap. Energy that begs
to be spent, transformed or exchanged. Mirrors are waiting for us, empty and
silent. Eventually, we’ll fall into them. One way or another, we will be forced
to confront our mirror self-image. That is the mirror’s promise. Throughout
development and human evolution the promise of self-identification has
proven to be an irresistible bait. We are almost compelled to look in the mirror,
as a mouse is compelled to get the cheese in the mouse trap. It is, however, hard
to admit our entrapment. Rather, we resemble a victim that willingly lives its
life inside a cage simply because the door is open. As it is, the mirror trap has
come to feel like home.

Mimicry in the land of the ‘soul hunters’

We have set out in this chapter to raise the question of how does a mirror
relate to catching prey and to understand what kind of forces (mechanical,
affective or semiotic) are involved or released during that process: How does
the mirror trap work and what kind of work does it do? We have already made
 The Mirror Trap 111

some progress with those questions by establishing in the previous section the
conceptual foundation for our grounding metaphor of mirror as trap. We are
now in need of a more practical hunting lesson. Anthropology has plenty to
offer. For our first stop in our hunting exploration we choose to visit the land
of the ‘soul hunters’, the Yukaghirs of Northeastern Siberia.22 This is a place
where hunters and prey mirror each other in unexpected ways. We want to
follow those ways through the ethnography of Rane Willerslev and use them
to understand some hidden dimensions of mirroring that perhaps will help
us to answer our questions. For our second stop we visit two neighbouring
groups in the equatorial rainforest of Amazonia: the Jivaros and the Tukanos.
Our anthropological guide here is Philippe Descola’s Beyond Nature and
Culture.23 In both cases we draw on the anthropological metaphysics of
hunting, aiming to explore how different types of predation as well as issues
of reciprocity and domination can help us understand better the central idea
of the mirror as trap.
Before we embark into this didactic hunting excursion, a brief explanatory
note is in order. It concerns our usual perception of the human–animal divide
and ideas of personhood. To state in brief what lies at the heart of the matter
we borrow the words of an elderly Yukaghir hunter: ‘animals, trees, and rivers
are “people like us”’.24 In the land of the Yukaghirs, as is usually the case with
other animist worlds, animals and people can borrow each other’s form. For
limited periods of time, animals can turn to people and people can turn into
animals. Personhood is not an exclusively human trait. Persons may appear
as rivers, trees or animals. Objects, animals and humans are all said to have
an ayibii, a ‘life essence’ and the world is ‘thus animated by living souls’.25 To
take on the appearance of an animal and adopt its viewpoint is, according to
Rane Willerslev, one of the key characteristics of being a person. Non-human
persons like the elk and the reindeer, the wolf, the bear, the fox and the raven
see themselves as humans do; that is, living in human-like households along
with their kin. A predatory animal, Willerslev states, will see a human as prey.
For prey animals a human is viewed as a predator. Life is a matter of the soul,
and the soul, the life essence, is equal in animals and humans. The perspective
of a species depends on the bodies they ‘wear’. In other worlds, one sees the
world from a different viewpoint once in a changed body. Understanding the
world becomes now mostly a bodily affair and depends on bodily functions.
112 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

But in this context, bodies are exchangeable. Since animals are persons, they
have a will of their own; they have preferences.
The Yukaghir hunter is convinced that to kill a deer the deer must be fond
of the hunter.

[I]n the opinion of the Yukaghir, a lucky hunt depends on

the good-will of the animal’s guardian-spirit but also on
that of the animal itself. Thus they say: ‘tolo’w xanice
e’rietum el kude’deti’ – that is: ‘if the reindeer does not like
the hunter, he will not be able to kill it’.26

Hunting is a lethal game of attraction in which the hunter, essentially, acts

like a mirror: to be liked by a deer the hunter must mimic its species. He
must disguise himself into a deer and imitate its movements. By doing so he
is thought to adopt both the human perspective and the perspective of the
animal. The Yukaghirs dress themselves in fur and wear masks and antlers to
imitate the appearance of prey. They appear, basically, like the prey’s mirrored
reflection. Mimetic practice allows the hunter to become like the animal and
both hunter and animal acquire mirroring points of view. Obviously, the
limit between self and other, man and animal, is unclear. The hunter must
simultaneously be one with himself (his human self) and the other (his prey)
without forgetting who he was before the transformation started. It is therefore
crucial for him to maintain his human point of view: he is the hunter who kills
the animal and eats it. There is a danger in the metamorphosis of the hunter.
By becoming the deer’s mirroring, the hunter might lose himself completely.
The Yukaghir hunters, therefore, struggle to transform their bodies into the
image of the prey without losing human perspective.
To help us understand the danger of the hunter’s metamorphosis to a
mirror image of his prey, Willerslev tells a story of an old Yukaghir hunter
who had been following a herd of reindeer: after about six hours on their
track, the hunter developed a feeling of being watched. He then saw an old
man a few meters away from him. The old man also took notice of the hunter
and smiled. When the hunter talked to him, asking him who he was, the
old man did not reply but only gestured to the hunter to follow him. The
hunter was tired and hungry and thought that the old man was willing to
share some food with him. So, the hunter followed the silent old man up the
 The Mirror Trap 113

trail. Then, the hunter noticed something strange: the old man’s footprints
were those of a reindeer, even though he was wearing kamus (skin-covered)
skis. But the hunter thought he was hallucinating because of exhaustion and
hunger and paid no further attention to the animal marks. Eventually, the
two men reached a big camp behind the hill. The camp was full of people,
old and young. Children were running around, women were cooking food
and men were sitting and smoking. The old man took the hunter to his tent.
But when he spoke to his wife, his voice was not human: ‘He spoke to his
wife by grunting just like a reindeer, and she grunted back.’27 The hunter was
very confused. He had no memory of those people or their camp behind the
hill. Yet, when the woman gave him a serving of moss, the hunter ate it and
thought it tasted good. Time was passing and the hunter started forgetting
things. He remembered he had a wife, and that his wife was waiting for him,
but he could not recall her name. And when he fell asleep, he dreamt that he
was surrounded by reindeer. Someone then spoke to the hunter and told him
that he had no place there, that he must leave. The hunter woke up and knew
he had to escape. He left the camp secretly and walked all the way back to his
home. His presence seemed surprising to the people of his village, as if they
never expected to see him again: ‘They said they thought I had died. “What
do you mean?” I asked them, “I have only been away for a week.” “No,” they
said. ‘We have not seen you for more than a month.’28 Suddenly, the hunter
realized what had happened to him: ‘It seems that the people I met were
reindeer, and I should have killed them, but at the time I did not know.’29
For the Yukaghir hunter, assuming the identity of the prey could lead to the
loss of the self. Mimesis carries a risk. Through the mirroring act – the attempt
to move, look and even smell like a reindeer or an elk – a hunter may lose his
sense of selfhood. He may become completely alienated from humankind and
remain forever a prisoner in the world of the prey. The hunter of the above story,
Willerslev suggests, instead of deceiving the reindeer by disguising himself like
one, was himself tricked by the animal. He believed he was one of them – a
member of the reindeer herd. Therefore, he saw the world through the eyes of a
reindeer, lived in their community, ate their food and in this dangerous game of
double identities he almost lost himself completely. The hunter, one might say,
fell for his own sham: he fell into his mimetic trap. Misled by a false image the
114 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

hunter lost his self-identity and turned to prey. In the Yukaghir hunting world
of seductive mirroring, both hunter and prey are in danger.

Stories of transformation

We now return to our discussion of the mirror trap. We want to ask an

important question that may seem misleadingly simple: in the vicinity of the
mirror trap who exactly is the hunter and who/what is the prey? Obviously,
human beings are making the mirrors and placing them into their surroundings
with their own hands. In that respect, it is legitimate to assume that humans –
the creators of the trap – are the hunters. As humans, at least in our modern
version, we like to claim that we are in control of the mirror as much as we are
of everything else we create. But then, the mirror trap is set for humans to be
caught in it. We set the trap for us to fall. Clearly, the mirror is a trap like no
other: a trap to catch an image. On a fundamental level, we construct and use
a mirror to capture images of ourselves, to tame the inevitable uncertainties
of who and what we are. The mirror is our prime weapon for self-hunting.
A weapon that operates as a material sign based on the principles of mimesis.
The problem is that, as with Yukaghirs’ hunting mimicry, mirror hunting
involves many dangers: like the Yukaghir hunter tricked into believing he was
actually the animal whose image he impersonated, we might come to suppose
that we are one with our mirror reflection. In contemporary societies that
prefer to trade on representations and images, the threat is more pronounced.
The mirror image poses an existential threat to the living body.
The Yukaghirs emphasize the risk involved in travelling between one’s real
body and an alien one, that is, the journey between real body and deer. They
associate that journey with feelings of profound anxiety and self-loss. Willerslev
reports an experience of deep-anxiety and self-alienation – a loss of one’s sense
of personhood. ‘Thus, an element of self-awareness or reflexivity is crucial to
safeguarding oneself against being carried away by an alien body.’30 In the case
of the mirror, the ‘alien body’ is not a body at all but the reflection of the body.
And yet, we need a similar sense of self-awareness because we embark on a
similar journey: the journey between felt body and mirroring – an ongoing,
everyday visual drama. A sense of dislocation and self-alienation is innate in
 The Mirror Trap 115

mirror gazing. Maintaining our human point of view in front of our mirrored
self is as crucial for us as it is for the disguised Yukaghir hunter mimicking the
deer. Not because we do not understand that what we are viewing is just an
image, but because our tendency is to misconstrue the self-image for all that
matters. The following remark on photography by the writer and film-maker
Susan Sontag may be relevant here: the true trait of modernity, she writes,
is not to regard the image as ‘the real thing; photographic images are hardly
that real. Instead reality has come to seem more and more like what we are
shown by cameras’.31 A similar representational ontology operates in the case
of mirror gazing. Of course, unlike the members of the Biami tribe discussed
in Chapter 2, the mirroring rarely surprises or scares us. Our eyes are far from
innocent. And yet, in our image-obsessed society the mirrored self trespasses
the borders of the real. It becomes the real ‘us’ in the eye of the other and in
social media. It becomes, thus, troublesome.
The aim is therefore the same: the Yukaghir hunters should not forget who
they were before they became the victim’s mirroring, and we must not forget
who we were before we gazed in the mirror and turned into a mirroring of
ourselves. Otherwise, we might fall into the mirror trap and become the image
we gaze at. Not, of course, in a literary sense, but in the way we understand,
think about and evaluate ourselves. As a physical reality, the mirror face in the
looking-glass can easily be accounted for as a simple, inanimate reflection. But
the experience of our mirror face poses a different challenge because it carries
with it our aspirations and fears concerning our image, social stereotypes and
demands. With no other means to visually apprehend ourselves, our mirror
image becomes the self of our imagination and at the same time society’s
puppet. A hybrid ‘creature’, half the product of our own making, that is, of
the phenomenal ‘I’ that perceives and experiences the world from the inside,
and half the product of our social environment, that is, the ‘other’ that always
gazes us from the outside. The topology we have used to conceptualize
this relationship, ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, is usually misleading when it comes
to understanding self-becoming. But in the case of the mirror it offers a
useful way to describe the phenomenological tension involved between the
experience of looking at our self in the mirror and that of conceptualizing
our self through the mirror. Blending mimesis with alterity, the outer with
the inner, the mirroring is gesturing to us silently to follow it, like the deer
116 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

gestured at the hunter deep in the forests of the Yukaghirs. If we do follow

it, we enter a domain where the real body transforms into an image which
transforms into reality. Such being the case, instead of finding our self in the
mirror, we lose it completely in naive deception.
Willerslev, in his ethnography, describes a personal experience of self-
transformation while hunting sable with a young Sakha man from Nelemnoye
of Siberia. Both worked very hard and indeed managed to catch many sables.
Nevertheless, Willerslev writes, the two men became obsessed with setting
traps and accumulating furs. They neglected their need for rest, firewood and
even food.

We always fell asleep in a cold cabin, exhausted and hungry. Then one
evening, when we were lying side by side on our plank bed, my companion
said: ‘Can’t you feel it?’ ‘Feel what?’ I asked. ‘How we are turning into greedy
predators, just like wolves. We have this need to kill more and more. Even
if we had two hundred sables we wouldn’t feel satisfied, would we? Just like
the devil, you see’. He paused for a while. Then he added, ‘I suggest we calm
down (Russian: uspokoit’sya) and stop hunting for a week or so’.32

Unlike hunting reindeer or elk, trapping does not involve disguising into
the animal by moving, smelling or sounding like them, but a need to think
like the animal. To set traps for sable, a hunter does not have to imitate their
appearance. Yet, it involves the ability to attain and to internalize the animal’s
point of view. The danger of the loss of the hunter’s sense of personhood is
again present: thinking like a sable a hunter may develop the animal’s blood
lust. The sable’s greed for blood equals that of a fox’s and a wolf ’s, and this is
why those animals are called ‘children of the devil’ by the locals. A hunter who
loses his human point of view to become like them is called the ‘devil’s son’ and
is equally careless. Such a hunter would experience only the present, like the
animals, and would know no past or future.
Yukaghir myths are full of stories of transformation where different species
take on each other’s bodies. Many of those stories involve members of a giant
cannibal tribe, cou’liye, who turn into handsome men to seduce Yukaghir
girls and eat them.33 The giants call their victims ‘elk’ or ‘reindeer’ as to them
human beings are animal prey. In some stories, however, the cannibalistic
non-humans fall in love with their intended victims and abandon their own
 The Mirror Trap 117

communities. In such a story, a young cannibal giant marries the Yukaghir girl
he was supposed to eat and lives among her kin. Yet, the transformation cannot
completely erase the desire for human flesh. One time, as he is in bed with his
wife, the transformed giant says to her while touching her breast: ‘“My late
father used to feed me with such things”.34 The wife gets worried and tells the
rest of the camp about the episode. The people agree that the former cannibal
is not entirely transformed and so they kill him.’ The situation is confusing: the
Yukaghirs, by killing the husband, murdered a transformed cannibal but also
one of their own. In killing a relative they have committed an unforgivable sin.
As a result, the ‘Sun deity’ punished the Yukaghirs by taking their fire away and
letting them all freeze to death.35
To take on the body of another is complicated. The new body might deceive
and seduce, but it is not easily controlled. The giant cannibal tamed his true
nature enough to marry the girl he loved but could not escape the memories
of tasting human flesh. The humans who killed him, however, were punished
since the deity who judged them obviously recognized the transformation of
the giant as real. To demonstrate further the complications and consequences
of transformation, Willerslev cites another story involving two girls seeking
revenge on the man who killed their parents. The man was called Lower Jaw
and, to kill him, the girls transformed themselves into wolves. To achieve the
transformation, the girls simply went down on their hands and knees and
started to move around like wolves. After turning into predators and killing
the man and his son, the wolf-girls ate their victims. Normally, Willerslev
suggests, cannibalism is seen as a terrible crime by the Yukaghirs, and it is
punished. But at the time the two girls ate their victims they had taken on the
bodies of wolves and, therefore, they subscribed to the moral code of those
predators. Wolves, naturally, are allowed to eat human flesh. So, the girls were
not punished but took on their human form again and lived a normal life
among their people. What we learn from the story is that, for the Yukaghirs,
once a person transforms into the image of an alien body, it is the new body
that determines the person’s point of view. Humans are not responsible for
their actions while in transformation. The new body claims the soul.
The mirror image presents us with a different point of view: it transforms
us into what we believe other people see of us, it turns us into objects.
118 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

Through the mirroring we identify with a ‘new body’: a traceless body. Then,
we think with it. Could it be that the mirroring claims some of our ayibii,
our ‘life essence’ as its own? It certainly moves and looks like us. It appears
somewhat alive. In that sense, the mirroring is a cannibalistic image: it feeds
from us. There is always the danger of ‘sharing’ our life with it; of letting it
‘steal’ something of our humanity. The acceptance, promotion and circulation
of the mirrored self – the mirror selfie distributed in social media is a good
example here – results in the social marginalization of the physical self. It is a
looting of the living body for which the ‘new body’ cannot be blamed. Why?
Because the mirrored self lacks responsibility: like a Yukaghir temporarily
transformed into a wolf it abides to a different moral code – that of the
new social and visual media. The ‘new body’ develops a ceaseless thirst for
attention. It lives for the moment. It constantly needs approval. It is forever
seeking proof of existence. It leads a life of no consequence. Losing our
human point of view in our everyday hunt for a perfect digital self might
mean adopting the behaviour of an image.
Do we still have the upper hand? Undoubtedly, the mirroring is totally
dependent on us, but, since we rely on it for self-awareness and to construct,
assume and communicate a social self that otherwise never existed, our own
autonomy has been compromised. Self and mirrored self are now living
parallel lives.

Seducing Narcissus

How many times, in vain, he leans to kiss

The pool’s deceptive surface or to plunge
His arms into water, keen to clasp
The neck he glimpses but cannot embrace …
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book III

The mirroring is an image capable of producing multiple and opposite

effects. At the start of this chapter we briefly discussed the self-rejecting gaze
of Antoine Roquentin, the protagonist of Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous novel
Nausea. Now we take another detour, this time in Greek mythology, where
we trace a mirroring so enticing it drives a young man to his death. The story
 The Mirror Trap 119

is that of Narcissus, son of nymph Liriope and river god Cephisus. There are
many versions of the Narcissus’s myth. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses we find a
classic version36: Narcissus grows up to become a young man of astonishing
beauty. His nymph mother asks Tiresias if her handsome boy will live to reach
old age. Tiresias presents Liriope with a riddle: ‘If he knows himself – not.’37
By the time he is sixteen, Narcissus is loved and desired by anyone who sees
him, male or female, but does not love anyone back. He is proud, distant and
rejects anyone who tries to approach him. One day, a scorned lover asks for
him to be punished for his callousness, and Nemesis, the Greek goddess of
revenge, obliges.
Narcissus finds himself near a lake with pure water, undisturbed by humans
or animals. On that lake’s clear surface Narcissus sees his reflection perfectly
for the first time. And for the first time in his life Narcissus is in love. Narcissus
is ‘overcome by the beauty of the image that he sees; he falls in love with an
immaterial hope, a shadow that he wrongly takes for substance’.38 The external
world plays a malevolent trick at him: like a hunter the lake ‘disguises’ as
Narcissus, and Narcissus does not immediately realize that what he is looking
at is his mirrored face. He takes his reflection to be that of another and that
other seems magnificent – an ideal and willing lover. A fatal attraction begins.
Narcissus encounters his image and is beguiled by it: ‘Transfixed, suspended
like a figure carved from marble, he looks down at his own face; stretched out
on the ground.’39
The confusion between self and image is one that Narcissus is unable to
overcome. In vain Ovid warns Narcissus of the illusion: ‘Child, what you seek is
nowhere to be found, your beloved is lost when you avert your eyes: that image
of an image without substance, arrives with you and with you it remains, and it
will leave when you leave – if you can.’40 But he can’t. Young Narcissus is unable
to turn his back on his self-reflection. The desire, the need, for his mirroring
is stronger than his love for his real physical self. Even when Narcissus realizes
that what he has been looking at all this time is his own reflection, the spell
is not broken. The seduction of the perfect mirroring proves lethal. Narcissus
remains tied down to his image, obsessed by it.
In front of the mirror, the void that separates body and reflection, disguised
hunter and enticed prey, is overcome by a stubborn illusion: we are here
and we are also there. The mirror image captures the body by modifying
120 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

its physicality into something fictional. ‘In other words, the body is not the
body. Its construction has been transposed into the domain of the image; the
body which we inhabit is indissociable from the grip of the image.’41 Narcissus
bestows to his mirrored self a value which is untranslatable into real experience.
The lake turns into a flawless mirror trap and the young man, seduced by his
mirroring, is unable to move away.
Narcissus believes his mirrored self to be the most beautiful and captivating
thing he had ever seen. Truly, if Antoine Roquentin from Sartre’s Nausea finds
nothing beautiful or even human in the mirror, Narcissus finds everything: eyes
that look like ‘a pair of stars worthy of Bacchus, a head of hair that might adorn
Apollo; those beardless cheeks, that neck of ivory, the decorative beauty of his
face, and the blushing snow of his complexion.’42 Narcissus mirrored face is
irresistible.
Narcissus’s gaze is an addiction: it is how a victim encounters the mirror.
His gaze ‘an insatiate stare fixed on that false shape’43 is the gaze of the deer
looking at the enchanting image of the Yukaghir hunter: the false shape of the
man who pretends to be the animal’s mirror image. Above all, Narcissus’s gaze
is a gaze that fails to be averted: a narcotic gaze. Narcissus’s fatal flow is his
inability to take his eyes away from his mirroring; he desires something which
is his but could never have it. The empty adoration of one’s own self generates
a reflection of absolute poverty: ‘Why seek at all, when all that I desire is mine
already? Riches in such abundance that I’ve been left without means!’44
The reflecting water forms for Narcissus a death trap. It gives to the young
man the means to gaze upon his own face but, whatever it grants to vision,
Narcissus cannot handle the gift. The reflected eyes seem like twin stars but
are essentially blinded by his predatorily aggression. The predatory character
of self-reflection is revealed as it holds Narcissus there, desperate and helpless,
ensnared in his own gaze. Narcissus fades away ‘as the golden wax melts when
it’s warmed, or as the morning frost retreats before the early sun’s scant heat’. 45
The heartbroken youth fell into the callous grip of self-adoration. Obsessed with
his image and a future sexual promise, Narcissus abandons himself at the mercy
of grief and unrequited love. More and more, the physical body is forsaken for
the sake of its own mirroring. In the end, failing to escape, Narcissus ultimately
dies in the mirror trap. Like the deer who gives itself up willingly for the love of
the disguised hunter, Narcissus offers himself as prey to his likeness.
 The Mirror Trap 121

Hunter’s beauty/the prey is in love

The Yukaghir hunter tricks the prey using its own image. The image becomes
the hunter’s weapon: it seduces and eventually draws the victim to its death.
To become an elk’s mirroring, apart from antlers and fur, the hunter wears skis
with the smooth skin of an elk’s leg to imitate the sound of the animal walking
on snow. In the hunter’s mimesis, the prey will see its own mirroring. Hunter
and animal will get closer to each other – the hunter continuously imitating
the movements of the prey as a huge mirror set up in the middle of the forest.
Mimesis influences the way one perceives and manipulates the surrounding
world. According to Michael Taussig, the mimetic modes of perception lie at
the basis of sympathetic magic.46 Mimesis can bridge the distance between the
self and the other (human on non-human). To mimic something is to be able
to feel it outside one’s body, to surrender to it and at the same time to control
it. Here Taussig is influenced by Walter Benjamin’s famous essay ‘On the
Mimetic Faculty’, originally written in 1933, where he argues that the faculty
of mimesis understood as an attempt to copy the ‘outside’ of the ‘Other’, but
also a means of usurping its power, as well as of appropriating its meaning, is a
universal feature of the human condition. When we mirror something bodily,
the boundary between self and other, nature and culture, real and imagined,
collapses.47 Between hunter and prey develops a mimetic bond which is almost
erotic. It does not happen quickly. The hunters’ impersonation of the prey is
‘a long process of opening their bodies’,48 which starts many days before the
hunt. The hunters try to lose their human smell by the use of sauna and adopt
a special linguistic code instead of ordinary human speech. When talking of
their indented prey, they will never reveal its name: instead of ‘elk’ they might
say ‘the big one’. They will avoid uttering the word ‘hunting’, using in its place
a phrase like ‘going for a walk in the forest’. The hunters will never say ‘kill’.
Knives will not sharpen in the open revealing their intentions. Otherwise, the
process of seduction will fail.
In that respect, the mirror is the perfect seducer: unlike a Yukaghir, or any
other hunter on earth, it has no self to maintain, no form to lose, no smell to
be rid of, no language to alter. It reflects our forms effortlessly; it becomes us.
At some level this game of mimesis can be a source of pleasure. In the case of
122 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

the Yukaghirs the pleasure is sexual. This is evident in the steps they take the
nights before the hunting. The hunter’s purpose here is to seduce the guardian
spirits of animals to act in his favour. For this purpose, they cast exotic goods
like vodka and tobacco into the fire to get the spirits into an erotic mood. Also,
a drunken spirit will not recognize the hunter’s disguise. It will fall for the false
image and go to bed with him. The idea is that the emotions of lust and sexual
pleasure will be extended from the guardian spirit to its physical counterpart
which is the prey. And the next morning the animal will be besotted with the
hunter. It will recall the love making and run towards him in sexual excitement.
The hunter then will shoot it dead. In his sleep, therefore, the hunter will
attempt to enter into the world of the shadows and reach the animal’s guardian
spirit and make love to it. Here are two examples of such nocturnal dream
adventures. The first story is told by a middle-aged male hunter:

They live in a wooden house. There is a barn too. I assume they keep the
animals in the barn. They are always glad to see me, the three sisters. When
I arrive, they are a little drunk [presumably, he is referring to the vodka
offered when feeding the fire]. They start to play around with my penis. … If
I’m hunting at the upper part of the river, I’ll take the oldest sister and we’ll
go to bed. If I hunt at the middle part, I’ll pick the middle sister. And if I’m
hunting at the lower part I’ll go with the youngest one. When I wake up I
know that in this season I will have good luck [in hunting].49

The second story is offered by an old woman:

I was lying sleeping with my husband in the tent, when I suddenly heard
a male voice calling me. ‘Stand up’, it said. I stood up. ‘Go up the river’, the
voice said. It was as if I started flying up the river. ‘Turn left’, the voice said.
I flew left, and there, in between the trees, stood a huge penis. (laughter) …
I won’t tell you anymore. But next morning, when we got up, I said to my
husband that I had had a dream. I didn’t tell him what I had dreamt, but just
said that we should go up river and then go to the left. So we did, and there,
at the very same spot, stood a huge bull [elk] that my husband killed.50

After having tried his best in his sleep, the hunter will continue with his act of
seduction when, in the morning, he will transform his body into the victim’s
image and go for the kill. The hunter would do his best to be handsome. His
clothing fur will be immaculate, his ammunition belt colourful, his knife
ornamented. Let’s not forget: a victim is, above all, in love with itself.
 The Mirror Trap 123

Predatory image

Hunting, for the Yukaghirs, is a game of seduction and transformation. It

depends on the narcissistic tendencies of the potential prey. But it is also a
game of love and participation akin to sympathetic magic. The hunter’s act
to modify his body to resemble the victim invokes to the future prey feelings
of empathy. Because of this empathy, the victim abandons its universe. The
hunter transforms the victim’s ‘perception of reality into a manipulated
fiction, which he then deliberately uses to kill it’.51 The fiction: the hunter is a
harmless lover. The victim will come to like not the hunter but its disguise. The
hunter must remain unaffected and not surrender to feelings of love for the
prey because love could lead to a real transformation: to the hunter actually
becoming the prey. Love and seduction are two different things. Seduction is,
according to Willerslev, to pretend love on the part of the hunter and vanity
on the part of the seduced victim. Sometimes, however, a hunter gets absorbed
in his mirroring act and forgets about the hunting. The victim gets away. The
Yukaghirs claim that the reason for the escape was that the hunter fell in love
with it. As a result, the hunter could start neglecting himself, stop eating and
eventually die consumed by the love for his prey. In a case like that the soul
of the hunter will be reincarnated as an animal and live among the prey. That
is why, the Yukaghirs believe, some animals demonstrate strange behaviour
and sometimes seek human company. If a deer or an elk comes too close to
humans it might be that the animal has a human soul: the soul of a hunter that
died in a mimicry act that went wrong.
The mirror image, on the other hand, is never in such danger. Narcissus’s
reflection would forever remain indifferent and elusive on the lake’s cold
water. Unlike a hunter who disguises himself into the image of an animal, the
mirroring has no self to be transformed by real love. A mirrored reflection
could never become like us, one of us, a credible part of any human self.
Love for one’s own image, therefore, can only pretend love: a common play of
seduction and vanity – seduction on the part of the mirroring, vanity on the
part of the mirror’s observer.
The mirroring is an image ahead of its game. Its relationship with us is
predatory. It plays on the observers’ narcissistic inclinations. It manipulates
one’s perception. It can lead to self-absorption. It can even excite one to the point
of self-surrender. The eyes of the deer, as they watch a hunter impersonating
124 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

its image, stare at the soul of our story. Without those two eyes the nature of
the mirroring would have been indescribable. The parallelism also serves an
additional purpose. It allows us to ask our next question: what exactly do we
surrender for the sake of our image? Working towards a possible answer in
the last part of this chapter, we continue our discourse on the metaphysics of
hunting by comparing two neighbouring groups in the equatorial rainforest of
Amazonia drawing on Philippe Descola’s Beyond Nature and Culture.52 These
are the Jivaros and the Tukanos.

Soul exchange in Amazonia

The Jivaros and the Tukanos of Colombian Amazonia live in small residential
units close to each other (situated no more than a few hundred kilometres away).
Their spatial proximity means that they share and live in similar environments.
The equatorial rainforest offers pretty much the same resources and imposes
similar ecological constraints upon both groups. They engage in hunting and
fishing. They also cultivate manioc (sweet in the case of Tukanos, bitter in the
case of Jivaros). The way they see and make sense of their environment is also
similar. Like most Indians of Amazonia, both groups participate in what has
been described as an ‘animist ontology’. The distinctive feature of such a world
view is that humans, animals and plants, regardless of their differences in
physicality, are thought to maintain a similar social and ceremonial life. Such
a perspectivist ontology is predicated on the continuity of soul or selfhood
and the discontinuity of body.53 This is not just to say that humans maintain
personal relations and alliances with plants, animals and the spirits they protect
them. Rather, it means that in sharing some of the ontological attributes of
the humans with whom they form a network of exchange many plants and
animals are regarded as persons. Both groups, Descola informs us, ‘categorize
humans, plants and animals as “people” (masa, in the Tukano languages) or
as “persons” (aents in the Jivaro languages) all of whom possess an analogous
interiority’. To put it simply, within such an animistic and participatory world,
humans can maintain with plants, animals and spirits the same kind of social
relations that we see among the Indians themselves. Exchange is at the heart
of social relationships in Amazonia – if not everywhere. ‘Everything seems
to circulate in an unending round of reciprocity’, Descola observes referring
 The Mirror Trap 125

to the ethnographic legacy of Claude Lévi-Strauss in the lowlands of South

America.54 Marriageable women, goods and the dead are exchanged between
men. Plants, foods and animals are exchanged between women. Hunters
exchange offerings to the animals they hunt in return for their meat.
Yet, despite sharing a world of similar ecological and ontological constraints,
the Jivaros and the Tukanos seem to have a very different attitude towards
their obligations and responsibilities. As Descola writes, although both groups
‘conceive of their relations with animals as being governed by relations of
affinity, the content that they ascribe to those relations could not be more
different. Whereas the Jivaro hunter treats his prey as a brother-in-law who is
potentially hostile and to whom nothing is owed, the Desana hunter treats it
as a spouse whose line of descent he is fertilizing.’55 In the former case of the
Jivaros their hostility towards the prey leads them to avoid their obligations
of exchange. By contrast, the Tukanos aim to honour their obligations
governed by a general principle of reciprocal dependence in their interaction
with the fellow inhabitants of their cosmos. To understand the relevance and
importance of that difference, we need to understand the role that exchange
and reciprocity plays in both groups and how it defines their relationship with
other people (human and non-human).
Let’s take a closer look at both groups starting with the Jivaro.
The different Jivaro tribes are in a constant warfare. Descola believes that
one reason Jivaros fight is to maintain self-continuity. To retain a sense of
continuity, they must take parts of other people’s identities. Headhunting
provides the Jivaros the means to take those elements without having to
reciprocate. Headhunting means taking the head of an enemy and shrinking
it. The shrinking takes place as part of a long and elaborate ritual. Its purpose
is mainly to remove the identity of the dead person and then transfer that
identity to the group of the murderer. In this way a virtual person is created.
This newly acquired identity would compensate for deaths within the kindred
group and become the principle for the birth of a new child. It will allow the
victor or his kin to multiply without having to oblige to marital reciprocity.
Still, through ritual, the tsantsa, the final product of the severed head after
desiccating and the modelling of its characteristics, is not to be a miniature of
its former owner. The tsantsa is, above all, an opportunity for a new person to
come into existence. The sole and most important function is for it to act, in
Descola’s words, as an identity you can transport, a pure individuality. For the
126 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

tsantsa to maintain a resemblance with the victim is not problematic. Personal

identity is not preserved in facial features but by other social traits like name,
speech, memory, face paintings and shared experiences. The Jivaro, however,
take certain precautions in order to make sure that the tsantsa is free of any
traces of past identity: they never call the tsantsa by the name of the person it
used to belong to; all the head’s orifices are sewn up thus provoking to the sense
organs an amnesia which is phenomenal and external, and, finally, the head is
blackened to obliterate the memory that resides in the patterns painted on it.
During the year-long tsantsa ritual, the head is known as many things
and is called by many names: soft thing, giver of women, wife, and at the last
stage, embryo. Once the ritual is completed, a baby can be born within the
murderer’s group without commitments or requirements. The baby is, in a
sense, the real outcome of all that simulated alliance and owns its existence to
an ideal affinity. The only affinity, Descola claims, truly desired by the Jivaros:
that which is free of any reciprocity, an affinity ‘devoid of affines’. Descola also
mentions vendetta warfare which may not involve the capturing of heads but
evolve around the same principle of the predatory taking of the dead man’s
belongings. The wives of the defeated enemy now belong to the victor and
any young children are adopted and raised as his own. The end goal is again
the same: the enlargement of one’s family without the necessary obligations
of reciprocity that a proper marriage alliance would entail. Very simply, the
Jivaros dislike giving things back for what they take. Their relationship with
their cosmos is predatory and killing is the essence of it, the stuff to build
one’s community on. The world is something you grab, not share. Identity is
forged through warfare. Adolescent boys must contact an ‘arutam’ spirit to
form a relationship with the ghost of a dead Jivaro warrior who will provide
him with bravery and protection. Yet, the assistance and courage a terrifying
‘arutam’ spirit unleashes upon the young warrior will fade with the murder of
each enemy. The warrior is then left vulnerable and weak. Personal strength is
something to be renewed constantly. Therefore, his whole existence is bound
to an endless circle of violence. This predatory attitude, the need to constantly
incorporate, according to Descola, the bodies and identities of other people in
order to maintain a self, means that the Jivaros are defined by what they kill
and assimilate. It is also a prevailing attitude in the relation of the Jivaros with
animals: seizure is preferred over established reciprocity.
 The Mirror Trap 127

The predatory ideology is also extended to plants. It rules relationships

even when killing is not directly involved. Manioc, the most common plant
in the Jivaro diet, is believed to be able to kill. It sucks the blood of people that
touches its leaves. Most often it attacks the women who take care of it and
their children. Sometimes, the Jivaro accuses the plant for the death of a baby.
Manioc’s vampirism would be brought to discussion and the death would be
attributed to anaemia. Women sing to plants to divert their blood thirst away
from themselves or their children and direct it towards less loved relatives.
The manioc plant, it seems, is a child, but one that would be eventually eaten
by the family. At the same time, the manioc tries to kill the human children
who brush by its leaves. Nothing is benign. Even gardening entails, as Descola
describes, a lethal tension – an aggressive relationship between human and
non-human children out to eat each other. Women should cultivate the plant-
children whose flesh will become porridge for their human-children and they
must do so while preventing the cannibalistic plant from avenging the family
by sucking their blood. From the capturing of heads to the hunting of animals
and the cultivation of the manioc plant, the Jivaros experience a world of
predatory tension.
Now, let’s turn our attention to the Tukanos of Colombian Amazonia, the
group that Descola cites as a counter-example to the Jivaros. We start with the
Desana, one of the many Tukano groups. Descola points out their belief that
an omnipotent creature, the Father Sun, created the world with its fertilizing
energy. The energy must be exchanged between the different inhabitants of
the cosmos, and, because it is not infinite, it must be re-directed into the close
circuit that engulfs the biosphere. For hunting, this means that every time an
animal is killed part of this energy passes to the human sphere and is cut off
from the animal domain. Consequently, the hunter must ensure that they kill
only what is needed for their survival and nothing more, so the circulation of
energy won’t be imperilled. The hunter is there to guard the energy flow. For
animals to be hunted and killed human souls are offered in return. That means
that the souls of the Desana who, in life, disrespected the rules of exchange will
become animals to compensate for the energy loss. Shamans also negotiate
the exchange between humans and animals by communicating with animal’s
spirit-masters. A human whose soul will eventually become an animal must
be available for every forest animal that will be killed: souls in return for game,
128 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

the principle process of energy feedback that Descola called the traffic of souls.
Therefore, humans and animals are equals. They have equal access to energy
and both strive to preserve the harmony of its flow.
Animals and humans accept freely the importance of equality and fair
exchange among each other. Hunters regenerate those they destroy: they
chant incantations before they eat an animal, ensuring that its spirit will
find its way back to its house and be reborn. There is an understanding of
mutual dependence between humans and animals and all action is governed
by egalitarian exchange. The soul exchange, the negotiation and offering of a
human soul in place of animal ensures not only that hunting will continue to
be successful but also that excesses will be prevented. Overkill is thought to be
punished. A hunter’s hubris will be avenged in the forest by a fatal accident. The
symmetry of obligation and the harmony of the energy flow are not negotiable.
Upon them depends the survival of the world.
This is symmetry in the forest: a constant negotiation between hunter and
prey to prevent overindulgence. The hunter, in engaging with the world, takes
care not to exhaust his relationship with it. So, what we take here is a lesson
in symbiosis, in existing together without wearing each other out. We learn
that a hunter may trap one hundred animals, but chooses that he can only
have two.

Hunters and prey: The gaze of the prey

We started this book with the image of a deer standing in front of a mirror. We
said that some of the strangest, but also interesting, things in human life can
be understood as relations between hunters and prey. In this chapter, adopting
the metaphor of the mirror as trap, we have tried to situate and explore the
logic of mirroring (in its broader sense) within the relevant anthropological
discussion of the complex relations between hunters and prey. We have argued
that humans can approach and engage with the mirror both as hunters and
prey. All living creatures are potentially prey of one form or another; only
few of them will ever become hunters. Being a prey is natural. Being a hunter
demands skill.
 The Mirror Trap 129

We may think of certain animals as natural predators. But a predator

is not a hunter. An act of predation is essentially about location, mutilation
and destruction of prey. An act of hunting, by contrast, is dialogical and
participatory. It is a social act. A predator primarily kills; a hunter, by contrast,
collects, relates and participates. This is why becoming a hunter presupposes
the ability to become a prey: the two roles are inseparable, their relationship
is one of reciprocity, alliance and sympathy. As we saw for the hunter of the
Siberian forest the very act of hunting, of killing, is based on mimicry and is
governed by the kind of affective logic we’ve seen in the case of erotic alliances
among human partners. A similar symmetric alliance can be seen in the case
of the Tukanos tribes where animals and humans accept freely the importance
of equality and fair exchange among each other. On the contrary, a predator,
like the Amazonian Jivaros, never really knows what it is like to be prey. Even
though the hunted animals are considered to be persons (described according
to gender like brother-in-law or potential wife) they are not given anything in
exchange for their bodies. The tone is that of a forced affability. The Jivaros’
intention is not to share or to form an alliance with the animals but to fool
them so that they will not escape their killing arrows or punish them for their
cannibalistic intentions.
The reason we have chosen the above ethnographic examples for
this comparative study is because they provide us with an interesting
complication of the question about what it means to adopt the perspective of
the hunter, instead of prey, in front of the mirror. Those examples also help
us to understand the important differences between a hunter and a predator.
The predator consumes, the hunter exchanges. The hunter must reciprocate
in one form or another for being allowed to receive the benefits of food. By
contrast, the predator feels no obligation to offering anything in exchange. In
the latter sense killing is asymmetrical, and in the former symmetrical and
participatory. We are not saying that a hunter is not going to kill the prey very
much like the predator does. But killing in the animist contexts of hunting is
different: it can also be viewed as an act of benevolence. The act of killing is just
an appearance for what Descola describes as a gift: ‘It is always out of a feeling
of generosity that a hunted animal delivers itself up to the hunter. Moved by
compassion for humans in the grip of hunger, it presents him with its carnal
130 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

envelope, as a gift, without expecting any compensation.’56 The contrasting

examples of the Amazonian Tukanos and Jivaros make an interesting case,
precisely because of what they can teach us about the different ways by which
the hunting for self-identity can be responsive and attentive, or unresponsive
and inconsiderate to the suffering of ‘others’. We have seen two neighbour
ontologies of hunting, one that permits participatory exchange (the Tukanos)
and one which does not (the Jivaros).
Perhaps, all that may seem far removed from our contemporary habits
of mirror gazing. The logic of our comparison may become clearer if we
remind ourselves the central idea of this chapter, that is, the mirror as trap.
During our everyday engagement with our mirror self-image, we constantly
adopt and exchange the above roles, that is, we can be the hunter, the
predator, but also the prey. Not only the mirror has the potential to capture
the self-image we see in it, it has become all the more evident that we can’t
get enough of it. ‘A capitalistic society’, Susan Sontag’s remarks, feeds on
images, ‘in order to stimulate buying and anaesthetise the injuries of class,
race, and sex. … The freedom to consume a plurality of images and goods
is equated with freedom itself. The narrowing of free political choice to free
economic consumption requires the unlimited production and consumption
of images.’57 Increasingly in our days, the image most fervently produced
and consumed is the self-image. In social media we put our self-images on
display. Our mirrored bodies become public spectacle while countless self-
images (selfies, mirror-selfies, etc.) are offered for consumption to fellow
image-consumers. Consuming, of course, is devouring – building up a need
for more. So, very quickly, new images must be produced to replace the
‘devoured’ ones. To keep up with the production of self-images we keep on
glancing in the mirror, in our smartphones screen or use the mirror app which
turns our phones and tablets into functional mirrors, searching for that next
mirroring we are going to share with the world. ‘The management of image
and self-image is an undeniably dominant contemporary compulsion.’58 We
want to control the images with which we fuel social media and consequently
sketch a social self. But could our mirror gaze ever be satisfied?
The relationship between self and mirrored self becomes greedy, burdened
and aggressive, in some sense cannibalistic: like the Jivaro’s manioc plant that
feeds the family and, at the same time, is thought to suck the blood out of
 The Mirror Trap 131

them, the mirror image might feed our ego but might also consume us. Instead
of symbiotic, our relationship with the mirror is now predatory.59 Take for
instance our contemporary practices of digital mirroring using selfies. In a
way, a Jivaro needs to maintain his identity in his forest with constant acts of
reassurance like we do in the world of social media through constantly posting
images of our self. The selfie becomes obsolete the minute it is created and
generates the need for the production of the next one to reaffirm our identity
and re-establish our image in the surrounding world of digital images. The
relentless struggle to renew energy and identity communicates a tension that
is, in both cases, predatory. The mirror image captured in our smartphone
takes up all space, becoming our new environment. We linger, voluntarily
inside a mirroring, in a digital Plato’s cave of the twenty-first century.
As we saw, Willerslev describes the Yukaghir hunter’s mimicking act as a
process of sexual seduction. The seduction depends on the prey becoming
fascinated by its own image. The hunter, therefore, should disguise himself to
become not an exact image of the prey, but an ideal image of it – an enchanting
promise. This form of seductive hunting resembles how advertising industry,
which we discussed in Chapter 3, lures us with retouched images of a
potentially achievable but still distant self-which-we-might become. We are
to be seduced by a fantasy self-image as the deer is to be trapped by a false
mirroring of what it might look like. The prey succumbs to the hunter only
because it desires itself.60 This desire is basically narcissistic. It is based on
self-adoration, in the ‘mimetic exaltation of one’s own image, or rather an
ideal mirage of resemblance’.61 The future victim should be confronted by
a self-image which will prove impossible to resist. The seducer’s triumph
depends entirely on how accurately he will resemble that image.
Perhaps inevitably, we all yearn for the ideal mirroring. Consumer society
and advertising promise us the means to achieve it. We are encouraged to seek
in the mirror (and document in a selfie) an image that will make us fall in love
with ourselves and will make other people desire, envy, accept, ‘like’ or ‘follow’
us. It is not our present and private image that we are mostly encouraged to
enjoy, but a shared, future image of us (us on vacation, us in a new car, us
looking younger …) made possible by the products we ought to buy. Like the
deer in the forests of the Yukaghir we might be captured by a trap baited with
our own image. The mirror binds us to our self-reflection so that we think we
132 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

are inseparable. It steals our love for our self and directs it to our mirroring,
which has now become public. Even when we are aware of the mirror trap, we
can do no more: we are condemned to look in the mirror and watch ourselves
move, breathe and change as an outside spectator. So, we watch at the vision
of our soulless mirrored bodies, searching for a self-image we can proudly
send out into the world. We enlarge the self-image on our screens to zoom on
our faces. Our gaze, the gaze of prey, full of fear, self-love and anticipation –
our eyes attentive and wary. This recognition makes the gaze of the deer more
familiar. It explains the face of the deer that appeared in the mirror instead of
our own in Chapter 5; the peculiar, deer-like shape on the shamanic mirror
in Chapter 6, the animal footprints we find on our pages. The eyes of the prey
are, in this book, essentially our own. In the face of victimization, in a world
which is mainly predatory, that common gaze connects humans and animals.
 8

How to look in the mirror

Transparent illusion

Looking at oneself in the mirror is commonplace and, at the same time,

‘profoundly alienating’.1 This much is obvious from what we discussed in the
previous chapters. Mirrors present us with a peculiar surface, quite different
from all the other natural or artificial surfaces that surround us. The purpose of
this surface is to abruptly obstruct and invert light. A mirror is nothing without
light. Although any material surface reflects light, the polished mirror is made
precisely for that purpose. It reflects light so well that it offers a perfect match
between the observer and the observed. But as with every surface reflecting light
there is a dark side as well. The illusion of transparency that the mirror offers
the perceiver is the exact opposite of the opaque material reality that being close
to perfectly non-absorbent of light is the distinctive feature of this object. This
tension between illusion and reality is at the heart of this last chapter.
The mirror, as a reflective surface, allows to look at our body as an external
delineated object. Importantly, it allows us to see parts of our body that we
own and feel but otherwise cannot see. In its capacity as a visual prosthesis
the mirror affords new experiential possibilities that extend our usual abilities
for interoception or proprioception.2 The basic sense of bodily self, as felt
through and within the confines of the own body, is now seen and experienced
outside of the body, projected onto the mirror surface. The impact of such a
realization can be troubling and perceptually confusing. The exposure to one’s
own image in a mirror can be even traumatic,3 especially where such exposure
is fresh, as with Biami’s ‘terror of self-awareness’ we discussed in Chapter 2, or
when infants’ encounter with their own specular image turns from the initial
illusory social joy of meeting a playmate to an experience of wariness, fear
134 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

and embarrassment, as demonstrated in the relevant psychological studies.4

In time, familiarity with the mirror takes away any initial fear or confusion
about mirror self-recognition. Yet, the perceptual anxiety of mirror gazing
lingers, and, when opportunity arises, the old fears return or, worse, our
mirroring creates new ones. Ageing offers an obvious example. ‘In old age’,
as Kathleen Woodward reminds us, ‘all mirrors are threatening’.5 Old age is
often construed as ‘unwatchable’; the ageing body is increasingly seen as it
is ‘in opposition to the self ’ and the self is alienated from our ageing body:
‘Given the western obsession with the body of youth, we can understand the
“horror” of the mirror image of the decrepit body as having been produced
as the inverse of the pleasures of the mirror image of the body of Narcissus.’6
The mirror presents us with an opportunity to appear, or in the words of
Jean Baudrillard, to perform an ‘appearing act’.7 It is a visual space to which
we return indefinitely in order to watch our self. Since the mirror allows us
to know and negotiate the appearance of the self we have good reasons to be
captured by it. In the previous chapter trying to understand what it means to be
captured and seduced by our image, we escaped into the forest to observe the
practice of hunting and the fate of prey. We studied the mirror as a trap capable
of ensnaring most of the human and non-human persons who come into
contact with it. As we’ve stated before, the encounter with the mirror trap lacks
the finality of the poisonous arrow trap faced by an African chimpanzee. But
the mirror trap is not harmless. Many times, in this book, we have described the
use and abuse of the mirror to inflict, willingly or unwillingly, harm or pain on
ourselves, as well as a sense of loss and despair. We have witnessed Narcissus’s
death caused by his own self-destructive admiration for his reflected image.
No doubt the mirror and its products (analogue or digital) have been
aggressively employed by the dominant forces of market economy to
promote their dream state of unfulfilled individualism based on narcissism,
submissive consumerism and addiction to continuous self-tracking. As a
result, it is hard to think of the mirror as having any true association with
human psychosocial and emotional well-being. Still, several studies suggest
otherwise. The mirror can also be a healing tool, used for caring for the self
and other. It appears that the same affordances and semiotic properties that
make the mirror a dangerous, potentially harmful object can be also used
therapeutically. The mirror possesses healing qualities that if realized could
 How to Look in the Mirror 135

be put to work for our benefit. Indeed, even its trickery can prove valuable.
The use of mirror therapy to treat phantom limb pain in amputees is a good
case in point. The term ‘phantom pain’ denotes in the medical literature the
feeling of pain experienced by an individual concerning a part of his or her
body which is no longer present. In the following section we discuss how
watching the reflection of their healthy hand moving in the mirror helps the
patients create a ‘therapeutic illusion’ of movement in the suffering/absent
limb. This exercise of deliberately ‘fooling themselves’ in front of the mirror –
that is to imagine a healthy hand moving at the side of the body where only
the absence of such a hand could be witnessed – seems to have positive effect
decreasing the pain. Those therapeutic dimensions of mirroring will form the
focus of this final chapter.
We discuss the mirror’s affordances for transparency, opacity and reflection
relevant to some peculiar syndromes but also techniques of healing that
could provide some unexpected insights about what happens when mirrors
are looked through. Consistently with the comparative spirit of philosophical
anthropology and material semiotics that characterize our approach, in this
book we try to turn this illusion of transparency into a method for transforming
our understanding of ordinary mirror gazing from a passive experience of
self-recognition to an active medium of critical self-consciousness.

Healing

The therapeutic value of the mirror is little known and even less understood, in
spite that the mirror has been used successfully8 in many health-care settings
especially in relation to eating9 and neurologic disorders such as dementia,10
stroke11 and phantom pain. Various types of mirror exposure treatment
(both cognitive dissonance-based and combined with mindfulness training)
have proven to be an effective tool towards enhancing self-acceptance and in
reducing body image disturbance in patients with eating disorders such as
anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.12 However, in modern psychopathology
the term ‘mirror therapy’ denotes primarily the analgesic function of mirror.13
Mirror therapy has been used in a variety of pain-related syndromes, like
chronic regional pain syndrome and motor-related syndromes (stroke,
136 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

hand surgery) where it has improved motor control, sensory recovery and
performance of activities of daily living in people with chronic stroke.14
The operational logic of mirror therapy is based on the dissonance created
between the task performed and visual feedback15: Placed at specific positions
(e.g. oriented parallel to the patients’ midline blocking the view of the affected
limb) the mirror gives the impression to the patients that what they are
looking at is their impaired part of their body (let’s say a hand) when in reality
they are watching the reflection of their unaffected limb into the mirror. In
other words, patients are ‘tricked’ by the mirror. A visual illusion is created
whereby movement of, or touch to, the intact limb is perceived as affecting the
other paretic or painful limb. This phenomenon of mirror visual feedback has
the capacity to alleviate phantom limb pain or promote motor recovery after
stroke.16 In the latter case, that of hemiplegia, part of the strategy of mirror
therapy involves the patients picturing their affected limb moving normally.
Usually, that entails watching their healthy hand in the mirror while imagining
that they are watching their impaired hand instead. Another strategy, where
a therapist is involved, is assisting the patient to move the affected hand in
the mirror in synchronicity with the unimpaired hand.17 The treatments of
the so-called ‘phantom’ pain after loss of a limb, as well as from stroke-related
paralysis are probably the most famous examples where mirror visual feedback
has been successfully applied in restoring brain function.

Phantom pain

The term ‘phantom limb’ was coined by Silas Weir Mitchell in 1872 to describe
the experience, common among patients who have lost an arm or leg, of the
vivid presence and severe intractable pain where the lost limb used to be.
The ‘phantom limb’ can persist for years after amputation. The occurrence of
phantom pain seems to be independent of age (although it is less frequent
in young children and congenital amputees), gender and level, or side of
amputation. The onset of pain, although in some cases may be delayed for
months or years, is usually early with the majority of patients developing
pain within the first few days after amputation. The exact aetiology of chronic
phantom pain is not well understood. However, it is generally agreed that
 How to Look in the Mirror 137

changes in the peripheral and the central nervous system following the
amputation of body parts other than limbs appear to play a key role. Usually
the pain is localized in distal parts of the missing limb (e.g. fingers and toes).
Patients describe phantom pain as ‘shooting, stabbing, boring, squeezing,
throbbing, and burning’ and in rare cases phantom pain may mimic pre-
amputation pain in quality and in location.18
The basic mirror technique for treating ‘phantom pain’ is simple, non-
invasive and widely practised. As mentioned, a portable glass mirror is
vertically placed on a table and aligned with the participants’ mid-sagittal
plane. Participants place their intact hand in front of the mirror and their
amputated limb behind the mirror. Then they perform movements of the
intact limb, while looking into the mirror.19 Or, participants have one of their
hands (lost or paralysed) behind a mirror while watching the reflected image
of their other unaffected hand.
Vilayanur Ramachandran and Diane Rogers-Ramachandran20 have been
pioneering in developing a mirror technique that incorporates a simple
‘virtual reality box’ that helps amputees to experience illusionary voluntary
movement in the phantom limb in order to alleviate the pain and discomfort.
That is actually a cardboard box inside of which a vertical mirror had been
placed. The roof of the box had been removed and two holes are crafted on its
front. The patient is told to insert both his healthy arm and his phantom arm
in the box through the holes. The mirror immediately creates the illusion that
the patient is now looking at two arms. In reality, the patient only observes the
healthy arm and the reflection of that arm, while the absence of his amputated
arm is hidden behind the mirror. The patient is then asked to move the healthy
arm and observe the reflection of the arm in the mirror. This, in turn, creates
the illusion that both arms obey the patient’s motor commands and perform
mirror symmetric movements. According to Ramachandran and Altschuler,
for some patients, it is as if ‘the phantom hand has been resurrected’.21 The
illusion is so powerful that people often report feeling as if their phantom,
placed behind the mirror, has ‘come alive’. What they actually see, objectively,
is their hand’s reflection inside the mirror, but what they perceive and
experience subjectively is ‘seeing through’ the mirror’s surface, as though it
were actually transparent.22 The stronger they feel and perceive the presence
of their phantom behind the mirror the stronger analgesic effect it has.
138 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

There are two major explanations about why that happens. One is that
the mirror exploits the brain’s predilection for prioritizing visual feedback
over somatosensory feedback concerning limb position. Another is that the
mirror provides a visual means to ‘contradict’ pain: ‘Ordinarily the patient
feels intense pain in an arm he cannot see (his phantom). Since nothing is
seen or felt other than the pain, there is nothing directly CONTRADICTING
it … ’23 (capitals in the original). Even though patients may recognize that
their phantom pain cannot be real – given that their phantom limb is not
real – this recognition does not seem to reduce their pain. Pain is usually
immune to the powers of the intellect. Indeed, pain is reduced only when the
power of ‘contradiction’ comes into play by technical means, namely, the use
of the mirror. It is the experience of ‘seeing through’ the mirror’s surface24
rather than merely looking at the visual reflection of the real hand that allows
the patient’s brain to realize ‘that there is no external object CAUSING the
pain in the optically resurrected phantom’ (capitals in the original), thus
rejecting the pain signal as spurious.25
Similarly, the patient with hemiplegia who is helped by a therapist to
move her impaired hand in front of the mirror might have the potential of
improvement because the mirror image (of her moving a paralysed arm)
contradicts her perceived inability of movement. The mirror image of her
moving hand, even though assisted or just imagined, acquires, due to its
effects, material substance. Not because the image is suddenly real, but because
material imagination has real consequences. The image, in a way, ‘happens’.
The mirror, ultimately, surrenders its functionality as an object that reflects
reality to become entangled with the imagination of the one who gazes in it.
The mirror is no longer merely mimicking bodily movement but also disguises
it by masking its weakness. Thus, on the mirror’s surface, acting, perceiving,
imagining and mirroring become indistinguishable from one another, turning
an optical illusion into a possibility of healing.

Severed mirroring/a sickness of the gaze

Phantom pain is relevant for our broader discussion of mirror gazing also for
another more general reason. Phantom pain is pain experienced at the point
 How to Look in the Mirror 139

of absence: what is not there, not a physical part of us anymore, hurts. The
general point of interest here has to do with all ‘absences’ that become painful
in front of the mirror. We are now referring to a gaze that searches in the
mirror for what is not there or what is not there any longer. It might be the case
that the reflection we see in front of us lacks some characteristics that we used
to have and still lingers on imagination (youth, for instance), or something we
simply do not possess – a certain prototype image of what our self should look
like. In both cases our gaze is met with an absence. So, while looking in the
mirror is looking at our self, the self we have in mind is not necessarily the one
we find in the looking-glass. Yet, the invisible characteristics are implicated
in the mirror-gazing experience as we sometimes see and evaluate ourselves
through them or even because of them. Youth, success, beauty or style might
not be indicated in our reflection but might well be involved in our mirror
gazing experience, since they are traits strenuously needed. In this sense, what
is not reflected in the mirror becomes ‘painful’ in the way an absent limb does.
It is ultimately the pain of that which does not exist, the pain of absence. The
body suffers a mock separation; the actual mirror image appears somehow
distorted and incomplete. Coming back to our discussion of the mirror trap in
the previous chapter, this mock separation is one of the major ways the mirror
hurts its victims: instead of poisonous arrows or iron claws, it inflicts on its
human prey the pain of the ideal mirroring. This ideal mirroring is always
absent, thus the ‘phantom-wound’.
It is not our reflection – what is actually there in the mirror – that produces
the pain and dissatisfaction. Rather, it is the ‘rival reflection’, the invisible self
we crave for that causes bewilderment and self-doubt. Even though we can
step in and out of the mirror trap as many times as we like, that invisible self
will never appear in our reflection – it only acts as bait to draw us into the
mirror trap. The ‘rival reflection’ disturbs self-awareness and self-appreciation;
it is a most insistent reminder of what the mirror spectator is deficient in.
The ‘rival reflection’ takes shape in our imagination: for instance, through the
image of the happy consumer on which capitalistic society depends to feed
itself. It acts as an imaginary body that is caught up between the lived body and
the body reflected in the mirror. In the end, the idea we have of ourselves is
not built through experience and experimentation, but through disorientation
and narcissism.
140 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

The mirrored body seldom lives up to expectations. There is always

something missing between the seeing and the seen. The ‘phantom-wound’
remains open. At a deeper level, mirror gazing becomes an experience of
missing self-parts: we become, in our minds, amputees. The severed gaze
focuses on what the reflected body does not possess; it ‘maims’ our mirrored
self. The one looking feels amputated despite of the body in the mirror
appearing whole. It is a sickness of the gaze.

Social mirrors

This absent or phantom body, like anything else bodily, is both imaginary
and real. On the one hand, the phantom body is imaginary because, at the
conscious reflective level, it is partly a story narrated (or more accurately
a collection of stories inscribed in the course of our life history) and partly
a memory re-enacted. On the other hand, the phantom body is real because
unlike other stories narrated (e.g. by means of language), bodily stories must
be performed or else they don’t carry conviction or have meaning. Bodily
inscription is incorporation. Of course, the stories we tell of ourselves in
front of the mirror can only ever be partial. They are stories of unknown
origin and unclear ending. This kind of anticipatory personal narrative
becomes easily absorbed into, or dominated by, available socio-political
discourses of subjectivation. It is those discourses that often determine our
self-narratives about what the body is and does, about how it should look or
behave. The mentioned phantom body is a hybrid creature composed of this
creative synergy or tension between our bodily selfhood and our narrative
selfhood.26
Many times, in this book we wrote about pre-conceived ideas of the self-
image, in the form of stereotypes, practices and norms imposed on us by
consumerist society and market economy. Before gazing in the mirror, before
even standing in front of it, we have in our minds a set of predictions and
anticipations on how our self-image will be judged, evaluated, accepted or
rejected; how it will fare in relation to the images of other people.
Mirror gazing, like any other skill, is subject to normative assessment and
social scrutiny. First of all, by looking in the mirror we become immediately
 How to Look in the Mirror 141

aware of how we look in relation with other people. What we see in the mirror
is also what other people see when they look at us. The appearance of the
specular image inherits (for better or worse) the concerns of one’s community.
As social creatures we want our mirroring to conform to our expectations of
how we should look like in the eyes of others.
The ontogenetic origins of this basic relationship between mirror gazing
and our need to ‘fit in’ has been demonstrated also experimentally.27 In
particular, young children’s (fourteen to fifty-two months) response to the
mirror mark test was explored in different social contexts to see whether
normative factors ‘such as the need to match the appearance of self to the
appearance of others’ may influence children’s mirror self-recognition
behaviour.28 The experimental procedure entailed two major conditions: in
the first condition yellow ‘post-it’ stickers where placed only on the forehead
of children. Most children passed the test, demonstrating a tendency to
touch and remove the mark off of their forehead. In the second condition,
everyone in the room, the child, experimenter and accompanying parent,
were marked prior to the child’s mirror exposure with similar ‘post-it’
stickers on their forehead. Children were now less likely to touch or remove
their mark ‘often putting it back on their forehead in an apparent attempt
at conforming with the social norm established in the testing room’.29 What
these findings suggest is that ‘children passing the mark test do not construe
the mirror reflection solely in terms of its reference to the embodied self,
but are also capable of construing such reflection in reference to how others
might perceive and evaluate them’.30 Cognition, Philippe Rochat and Dan
Zahavi write, is not the only thing involved in the mirror experience ‘but
also a sensitivity and awareness of evaluative others as well as a conformity
to perceived social norms, what is allowed or promoted by the culture,
and what is not’.31 The manifestation of mirror self-recognition, at least
in humans, always involves others. A labour on self-presentation, self-
correction of public appearance, all signs of ‘normative conformity’32 are the
trademarks of the mirror self-experience.
The main trait of the mirror is to make us aware of ourselves by making our
bodies visible. In fact, the mirror is unique at not letting us escape ourselves.
While any other object around us gives us such opportunity, providing us
with the visual distraction of all that is not us, the mirror traps our gaze in
142 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

our reflection and throws ‘ourselves’ back on us. Our gaze is now world-blind.
The body sees itself seeing, examines itself examining. Vision, in front of a
mirror, is not liberty from the self; it is chained to an image that is ‘outside’
as a portrait might be, but is not independent of us, unaware of us, there
without us.
Our mirror double – to which, if we raise our right hand in salute it will raise
its left – exercises on us a kind of thought and emotional control. By turning
our body into a spectacle the mirror makes us more willing to conform to
the social norm of public appearance. The mirror makes us more compliant.
We might say that the mirror image is forcing us to behave in ways that are
not always meaningful for us but that, nonetheless, make good sense when
we think with others in mind33 – like walking about carrying a yellow ‘post-it’
sticker stuck on our foreheads because everyone else around us does so.
Is there any space for resistance?

Body without organs

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s notion of the ‘Body Without Organs’
is relevant here. The French playwright Antonin Artaud was the first to
introduce this notion as a means to be done with God’s judgement. For
Artaud there can’t be any such judgement unless there are organs. Our organs
allow for us to be judged and controlled. Therefore, a body without organs is
a body liberated. It is also a body freed from social, biological and political
censorship: a body open to experimentation, and, if we exercise caution, a
body free of repression. Organs: static, fixed, bind to the skin; organized and
organizing, unable of change. Deleuze and Guattari urge us to find a way to
make a body without organs for ourselves. ‘It’s a question of life and death,
youth and old age, sadness and joy. It is where everything is played out.’34 A
body without organs is experimentation. At the same time, it is a limit and a
process of becoming. A body without organs is a set of practices. To have one
in your life is inevitable:

On it we sleep, live our waking lives, fight – fight and are fought – seek our
place, experience untold happiness and fabulous defeats; on it we penetrate
and are penetrated; on it we love … Your body without organs is already
 How to Look in the Mirror 143

there, waiting for you. But you can fail; mess it up. You may end up with a
body which is dry, stupefied, a body without gaiety, ecstasy and dance.35

How can the habit of mirror gazing be fruitfully brought in to this process? To
begin with, mirror gazing provides us with a vision our bodies: skin, eyes, ears,
nose, mouth, etc. None of those organs, nevertheless, are truly there on the
glass. What we actually view is an empty reflection, a vision of an organ-less self.
Truly, the double in the mirror is lacking in everything: a drained shell instead
of Deleuze and Guattari’s full egg; a flat, virtual body instead of a full, living
one. It is interesting (for us), it intrigues us, only because we desperately want
to learn things about ourselves. Our mirroring, obviously, possesses no organs;
it has no substance, no bodily limitation. Does it set us free? Unfortunately, no.
Not automatically. As we discussed, what we initially experience when we first
look into the mirror is a sense of displacement, a bilocation. Our self relocates
and becomes a reflection. We exchange a real self with a mirror image. In fact,
it is more of a distraction than an exchange. The mirror image resembles a
body that loses everything at once by a too-sudden dislocation – a phantom
that stands on the ruins of our physical selves. Perhaps, then, we have provided
a possible answer to Edmund Carpenter’s question about the tribal terror of
self-awareness (see Chapter 2). There is something frightening to a self that all
of a sudden relocates, deprived of everything: flesh, organs, warmth, heartbeat,
breath. The knowledge of our body is disturbed by the presence of our organ-
less mirror double and our sense of personal identity weakens. The terror of
bilocation is not only one of sudden self-awareness, as Carpenter assumes, but
also one of transformation – an abrupt becoming-an-image that accompanies
the first glimpses of self-recognition.
This becoming-an-image is essential for society’s control over us. Easier
than controlling a body is to control an image that body aspires to. The mirror
image is binding. It binds us with society: with the social eye. Because what we
see in the mirror is what another person sees when looking at us, the social
eye becomes, in a way, our own. A new awareness. An adopted eye making
us aware of our appearance to the world. So, despite its lack of organs, the
mirrored body has other ways to organize and regulate our behaviour. Artaud’s
desire to be done with judgement through an organ-less body, we mentioned
before, seems to be working in reverse: the more we look in the mirror the
more we become aware of our self as a social spectacle.
144 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

On seeing through

The mirror takes us ‘out there’; it exposes our visibility to others. In the mirror,
Merleau-Ponty wrote, ‘my externality becomes complete’.36 All that is secret
passes into the face reflection, that ‘flat, closed being’ of which we were only
dimly aware from seeing our reflections in the water. How should we deal with
this exposure? For Merleau-Ponty, the face in the mirror is an opportunity for
self-knowledge and transgressive embodiment. A face is what we see and at
the same time something we must learn how to look at. Common experience
and phenomenology tell us that the body, whose face we are looking at, is more
than a bundle of well-assembled tissues, surfaces and organs. We have every
good reason to assume that there is a self, our self, which is inseparably linked
with that body we see in the mirror. But ‘how do I know the person I see in the
mirror is really me?’37 Why assume that it is our body, rather than a stranger,
that we see in the mirror? We assume it is our body because it looks like we do,
moves when we move and we see it being touched when we touch ourselves.
That basic sensation can be challenged, leading to various forms of mirrored-
self misidentification associated with the delusional belief that one’s reflection
in the mirror is a stranger. Indeed, as a ‘hard-won’ but also ‘slightly unstable’
evolutionary and developmental accomplishment, mirror self-recognition
has proven most vulnerable, especially in the context of neurodegenerative
disease.38 Take for instance mirror agnosia, a condition where the person
seems to believe that the mirrored image is real (not a reflection) and the
real object is inside the mirror or behind the mirror. When people with this
condition are asked to localize and grasp the object reflected in the mirror
instead of looking for the original object in its real place, they try repeatedly
to grasp the objects inside the mirror. Paradoxically such persons are clearly
able to recognize the mirror as an object. They know what mirror is and does;
they identify the frame and the glass of the mirror and know that they look at
it. Yet, they seem unable to use that knowledge when interacting with mirrors
as if they are locked inside the looking-glass. The so-called ‘mirror sign’ is
another characteristic form of mirror agnosia. Patients are now able to identify
the real locations of the reflected objects as coming from behind as well as to
recognize other people’s reflections in the mirror and to define the reflective
properties of mirrors, but are unable or have great difficulty to ‘recognize one’s
 How to Look in the Mirror 145

own mirrored reflection’.39 Instead of seeing one’s reflection in the mirror, what
they see is a stranger that could be a friend, an enemy or a god.40 Not only they
entertain the delusional belief that the person they see in the mirror is not
themselves, they also seem to maintain this belief when challenged.41
What can we learn? We believe that those occasions of impediment and
mental disruption, strange and profoundly troubling as they may be, or they
may seem to be, for the patients involved, offer us the equivalent of a borderless
mirror, that is a mirror that invites and allows exactly the kind of ‘abnormal’
exchange or participation that ‘normal’ people are usually denied in their
daily encounters with the looking-glass. We should be looking closer at those
‘abnormal’ participatory exchanges and try to benefit from the insights that
they offer.
Looking into the mirror is easy but finding oneself in the mirror requires
skill: you must both learn and unlearn how to see. Without that skill the mirror
will merely trap our gaze like prey. It will reflect without revealing. Our ways
of seeing are not given or fixed. Seeing is an act of creation more than it is a
re-presentation. As such, meaning and self-awareness are not guaranteed on
the mirror’s surface. In spite of the repetitive character of our everyday ritual
of mirror gazing, coming to terms with our ever-changing image is not always
successful. We need to embrace this uncertainty. To remember is also to forget.
Perhaps sometimes the healthy thing to do is to gaze at our mirrored face (or
at least pretend) from a state of amnesia, as if we know or remember nothing
about it. In those rare occasions we allow ourselves to being transformed; we
let the mirror do its magic. When that happens our phantom-self becomes
alive. The mirror has to succumb to the change as well: it has to ‘hide’ itself.
In order for our gaze to become flexible and adventurous the mirror should
give up something of its rigidity. To see through an object, the object must
somehow cease to be an object, that is, it must lose its objecthood and turn
into a thing. Things are diluted entities, open and undefined. In that sense
mirroring becomes thinging42: an act of thinking and feeling with and through
the mirror. The mirror opens up its borders.
In different chapters of this book we talked of such an unorthodox
experience. In literature, the mirror compromises its materiality, its glass, for
Carroll’s Alice to step through or Borges’ mirror people to enter our realm.
In Plath’s poetry, the mirror fills up with water for a terrible fish to swim
146 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

in it. In the case of the shamanic mirror in Mongolia we tried to unlearn

our assumptions and to look ‘through’ the mirror as if it was transparent. In
the forests of the Yukaghir, the body of the hunter itself becomes a mirror
to sexually seduce his prey. To end this book, we return to this primary
experience of ‘seeing through’ to explore its healing properties. One deeply
entrenched assumption about the mirror is that the mirror image cannot
lie. Remember the words of Umberto Eco from Chapter 2: one ‘cannot lie
with and through a mirror image’.43 Still, it is sometimes necessary, as in
the case of the healing mirror box we discussed above, to purposefully fall
for appearances. In the phantom limb experiments the visual message of a
healthy, obedient hand in the mirror evades the reality of its absence. The
mirror becomes, in the patient’s mind, transparent: the intended reflection
eliminates the object. Tricking the body into looking through the mirror at
something which is not actually there seems to bypass the pain. Looking in
the mirror the patient or amputee confuses the image of the hand reflected
on the mirror’s surface for the lost or paralysed hand that is actually hidden
behind the mirror. Gazing through the looking-glass, therefore, sometimes
produces a ‘fiction’ that heals.
The mirror, however, rarely becomes transparent on its own. Seeing through
or beyond the mirror is, in the case of mirror therapy, the result of deliberate
and organized effort. Falling for appearances is often needed in order to gain
new access to the reality of our existence. That reality is very hard to see with
our naked eyes: our imagination should also be recruited. Imagination, here,
does not denote the kind of ‘mental imaging’ that happens when the world
is not present or when the body is sleeping. Imagination here is enactive; it
denotes the kind of material imagination44 that helps us see with and through
the mirror. However, mirror looking, as it is practised in our modern culture,
is deprived of material imagination. A mirror window through which mirror
images could come in or go out is something we would allow only in fiction.
Therefore, to us, the mirror surface remains impermeable. And so, one way or
another, the mirror fails us. It fails because no bridge is established between
mirroring and imagining. More accurately though, it is our gaze that fails. This
lack of imaginative engagement, through and with the mirror, often renders it
an uneventful and oppressive device. Yet, by no means is this the only way, or
the natural way, to look at the mirror.
 How to Look in the Mirror 147

As young children with innocent eyes we used to look ‘through’ the mirror.
Probably it took us only a couple of days to learn that there is nothing to reach
and grab for other than a solid reflective surface. We learned to take a different
perceptual stance towards the mirror: to look ‘at’ the mirror rather than
‘through’ it. Unlearning that perceptual habit is not as easy. The experience of
transparency is lost in the adult modern world. We no longer remember how
to look through the mirror. We cannot even imagine what it feels like to do
so. In those rare occasions that the experience of transparency returns, it is no
longer the sign of playfulness, enactive discovery and re-enchantment, but of
mental impairment as with the case of mirror agnosia we discussed. Does this
have to be the case?

Metamorphoses: The gaze of the hunter

We believe that retaining or re-discovering the ability to look through the

mirror is possible and can be also therapeutic. We are gesturing towards a new
kind of mirror exposure, one that promotes a therapeutic alliance between self
and the mirror. This alliance is comparable to the alliance between the hunter
and the prey we explored in the previous chapter. Looking through the mirror
demands that in our engagement with the mirror we abandon the gaze of prey
and adopt the gaze of the hunter. What does this mean?
Prey usually sees whatever the hunter intends. The hunter knows the needs
of the prey and so is able to manipulate its behaviour and movements. In our
own visual culture that seems to feed on self-images; our steps are directed
in front of a mirror – real or imaginary, traditional or digital. Standing there,
our self-love grows, so does our need. As far as self-direction is concerned,
shedding the skin of the prey and becoming a hunter means to stop being
herded around. It also means we have to strike a balance: living life in front
of the mirror is to exhaust the relationship with oneself. That is to adopt the
gaze of prey or in some cases that of a predator. A hunter’s gaze, instead, would
never be self-consuming.
The philosopher Michael Foucault remarked in an interview in 1984 that
an important duty of philosophy is its critical function: ‘the challenging of
all phenomena of domination at whatever level or under whatever form
148 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

they present themselves-political, economic, sexual, institutional, and so

on. This critical function of philosophy, up to a certain point, emerges right
from the Socratic imperative: “Be concerned with yourself, i.e., ground
yourself in liberty, through the mastery of self.”’45 So, what we are after here
can be described as critical mirroring, that is, mirroring for critical self-
consciousness. This is the consciousness that one develops only by adopting
the gaze of the hunter. The procedure has many risks and demands caution.
Like the Yukaghir hunter we run the risk of losing ourselves – of becoming
that elusive other that lives inside the mirror. Still how we look in the mirror
should be our choice.
This remaking of gaze is part of a broader strategy for transforming our
ecology of perception: our ways of seeing and of thinking inside the world.
That move presupposes a great deal of unlearning. But a hunter is nothing if
not flexible and inventive. The gaze of the hunter refers to an ability to see the
world differently. In our case that means seeing the self-reflection differently: a
hunter would choose when and how to gaze in the mirror and what to ‘read’ in
it. The opposite is a habitual and often mechanical way of looking: the lethargic
and self-absorbed gaze of a victim repeatedly falling into the mirror trap,
learning nothing. The gaze of the hunter is an invitation to see the mirror’s
enchantment and not just its glass: to find oneself in the mirror but also in
the mirror’s depths. Acquiring such a gaze means that we do not exhaust our
relationship with our image. The gaze of the hunter is open to possibilities,
subject to constant change and re-evaluation. Crucially, the gaze of the
hunter touches on the mirror lightly. The effected transformation is worth
the effort. The mirror opens up to new possibilities of participatory sense-
making and endless opportunities of looking at, with, through and in. A new
ecology of mirroring thus emerges, one in which our most deeply entrenched
recollections, projections and anticipations can be challenged and exchanged.
Mimesis is now transformed into critical self-consciousness.
 9

Epilogue

The relation with the mirror that we have set out to describe in this book
cannot be perceived from a single perspective point. People, in different
situations, times and places, do not necessarily perceive the same thing when
they look in the mirror – their senses and bodies can be differentially attuned
to it. They look in it differently. In the previous chapters we have sought to
reveal the varieties of mirror gazing and to understand their agency and
impact in human life and selfhood. We were thus concerned with the use
and abuse of the mirror, and especially of the mirroring, as a cross-cultural
medium of self-identification. To this end, the book directed to the mirror an
explorative anthropological gaze intended at enactive discovery.1 The goal has
been to turn the mirror into a creative apparatus of experimentation and of
self-transformation.
By way of conclusion we return to the crucial question we raised at the start
of the previous chapter: What does it mean and what does it take to recognize
oneself in a mirror? Finding oneself in the mirror is not as easy as we may
think. Often it is not our hand that holds the mirror; it is not our face or body
that we see reflected in it. Whose body or face is that? Whose hand is holding
the mirror? In this book we tried to show that self and the other, individual
and society, hold the mirror together. Sometimes in harmony, resembling the
participatory exchanges of the Amazonian Tukanos, sometimes pulling it in
opposite directions, resembling the asymmetrical predatory spirit of the Jivaro
tribes. The body is in the middle: never just an ‘I’ or a social ‘me’. The self is
where the bodily ‘I’ and the social ‘me’ meet. The mirror can facilitate but also
disrupt this meeting.
The practice of mirror gazing establishes an open circuit between the body
that sees the seeing body undergoing constant transformation (biological,
150 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

cognitive, social and technical). The bodily self that is visible in the mirror
may well be disturbed (e.g. by ageing, by accident, by disease) and obstructed.
Our self-image can be extended and mediated; it can also become burdened
by parts that do not belong to it. In that sense, the mirror trap might even be
considered like a training terrain for the practice of ‘being seen’, of realizing
the self as image.
According to the mirror self-recognition test, a child’s touching of a mark
on the body, once discovered in the mirror, is interpreted as an explicit
index of self-awareness. When a Western Samoan child, studied by Philippe
Rochat, confronted with his mirror reflection after a yellow Post-It sticker was
surreptitiously placed on the top of his forehead, he immediately identifies it,
and reaches for it to touch it or to remove it.2 Throughout the course of our
lives, we are surreptitiously marked. Usually we do not bother to understand
the nature of those marks. We take self-awareness for granted. We have
stopped wondering what we see when we see ourselves in a mirror. Self-
recognition is now diminishing to mere object recognition. At best, we behave
like a face recognition software. If the marks are internal, inscribed beneath
the skin, often we do not even realize that we have been marked. But even
when we do see the marks we seem uncertain about what exactly we should
do with them. Those marks are different. Unlike the innocent rouge or stickers
in use when children and animals are tested in the mirror mark, these marks
cannot be easily removed once we perceive them. They remain unbeknownst
and attached to our skin. They become our second skin; what Terence Turner
would call ‘social skin’.3
We have spoken about memory in scars before, saying that the lines and
marks of our face are threads and traces of personal narrative (see Chapter ­3).
They mark and preserve our history. We also pointed out that extreme cosmetic
techniques used for beautification, such as plastic surgery, can be seen as an
implicit attempt to do the opposite – a sort of depersonalization: amnesia
forced on the skin that, in certain aspects, equalizes the phenomenal amnesia
induced to the body during the tsantsa preparation of the Jivaro tribes. Here,
we took the opportunity to underline a way in which personal identity is seen
to be communicated not through facial features but more through the ‘history
of a face’.
 Epilogue 151

To explain, the modern industries of beautification promote a false narrative

about the mirror self-image in which personal identity is often presented as
something intimately associated with specific aesthetic or facial qualities as
they manifest on the human skin. The implicit message, damage on the skin
is damage on the self, perhaps explains why the increased concern to repair
ageing skin or face is not a mere aesthetic issue but also a deeper attempt to
reclaim or restore personal identity which is perceived as being threatened
by time. Still, the beautiful and timeless face at the centre of this narrative of
beautification is an illusion. It is not a real face. It is a face deprived of memory
and thus of humanity. It is a face already disconnected from the person
whose pathway in life and emotional state was meaning to signify. It may be a
beautiful face. But it is also a face that can be commercialized – a saleable face.
A face from which the traces of time and life history have been erased is a face
without critical consciousness.
Succumbing to this narrative about the mirror self-image, we are deceived
by our own reflection and become the prey of our own trap. One of Damien
Hirst’s early art installations from 1990, A Thousand Years, offers an extremely
powerful and unexpected means to visualize that. Hirst presented a glass box
with the decaying head of a cow trapped inside it. The head bred maggots
that turned to flies. Inside the glass box, there was also a trap for flies – the
sort of a trap which attracts flies on its high voltage light and burns them. ‘A
trap within a trap’, Alfred Gell wrote about that installation: ‘Victims within a
victim.’4 With critical mirroring the face can no longer be discredited by age,
damage, change, difference or appearance. Moreover, the marking of that face
through time, experience and personal narrative becomes the primary source
of its affective power and aesthetic appeal. Such a face or body is now viewed
as part of a common humanity, a shared destiny, a testimony to communal
existence and awareness of death.
The challenge we face in front of the mirror can also be expressed in the form
of a Foucauldian imperative with two related components: The first is how to
take proper ‘care’ of our bodies. The second is how to reclaim our critical self-
consciousness. To answer these challenges, one needs to re-learn how to look
in the mirror: what to expect, what to appreciate, what to disregard completely,
what to remember and what to forget. This is not an easy task. Under the
152 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

spell of modernism and the capitalist ethos of consumerism, mirror gazing

increasingly becomes an endangered skill. Capitalist society realized that in
order to control consumption habits it needs to control desire. As Bernard
Stiegler notes, capitalism is concerned not only with increased productivity but
also with winning the libido of the consumers.5 The image industry constantly
tries to capture our attention and feed our imagination with uniform images of
how we should look like. The image maker tries, in other words, to manipulate
people’s desire and consciousness regarding how they should appear, and, as
a consequence, their mirror gaze. Market economy needs a consumer ‘whose
behaviour is standardised through the formation and artificial manufacturing
of his desires’.6 By depriving people of their individuality, ‘hyper-industrial’
society produces ‘herds of beings lacking being – and lacking becoming,
that is, lacking a future’.7 This leads us to note that the word ‘desire’, in this
book, has a specific meaning. In the idiom of Deleuze and Guattari, desire
denotes a feeling characterized by productive energy and the absence of lack.
A desire lacking in nothing, independent of pleasure and infused with joy:
‘a joy that is immanent to desire as though desire were filled by itself and its
contemplations, a joy that implies no lack or impossibility and is not measured
by pleasure since it is what distributes intensities of pleasure and prevents
them from being suffused by anxiety, shame, and guilt.’8 To desire in such a
way, when looking in the mirror, is to experience a sort of completeness. A
lack of lacking. This, nevertheless, means to be able to accept our self-image
for what it is: individual and unique. This is the kind of desire we are after. This
is also the kind of desire the mirror image is most resistant to.
Yet, the truth of the matter is that in front of the mirror all humans are
equals. In facilitating us to view ourselves from the ‘outside’, the mirror enables
us to compare our image with that of other people. It allows, consequently,
for a sort of antagonism to arise – sometimes a fierce one. Still, we must
acknowledge: in the mirror-gazing ‘competition’ everybody is given the same
chance. Rich or poor, you glance in the same mirror to face what everybody
else is facing. The logic of capitalism has no real power; it is the art of looking
that matters. The mirroring cannot be bought or exchanged. Unlike any other
prestige commodity or medium of self-presentation, its value is not negotiable.
Supposing that a mirror’s glass is not cracked or otherwise damaged, the
standard household looking-glass will produce the same service whether
 Epilogue 153

framed on gold or on plain metal, rusted around the edges. And it does so
regardless of the person that stands in front of it: a king and a beggar would
have the same treatment. Mirroring is freely available. It resists equally the
desire of all people, powerful or underprivileged. Thus, the mirror is, we
declare, one of the rare objects of democracy. An equalizer. The mirror can’t
be bribed. In order to change our mirroring, we have to change ourselves: the
way we look in the mirror.
To accomplish this transformation, we can only count on ourselves. The
mirror image will not transform to meet our desire or to accommodate our
self-narratives (not even our psychopathologies). Even when ‘we’ move in the
mirror, the mirror remains still; its basic function and its physical properties
are not changing. We can come closer or move further away from the mirror’s
surface, but the mirror itself provides a fixed and unambiguous point of
reference. There is a notable tension here that is important to point out: since
early prehistory, images co-evolve with human perception. Different kinds of
images and ways of imaging will bring about different kinds of perception and
ways of seeing.9 The image, like most things that matter in human life, is not
a fixed thing but a dynamic process. As Hans Belting observes, ‘every image,
once it has fulfilled its current mission, generates a new image’.10 That much
seems inevitable – the photographic or the cinematic image, for instance,
has withstood drastic transformation since their invention. Yet, Belting’s just
remark cannot apply to the mirroring. For all the decades to come, and for all
that has been, the mirroring remains the same. There is something, however,
that we must make a note of, a new phenomenon: the mirror selfie. Through
the mirror selfie, the mirroring ‘escaped’ the confines of its own material
medium and entered the world of digital photography and media culture. In a
sense, the mirror image invaded photography acquiring, thus, two features it
never had: permanence and sociability. The mirroring may now be ‘arrested’ in
a picture and sent travelling into the world of social media: it has an audience.
We consider the mirror selfie as a hybrid technology brought about by the
synergy of the mirroring and the photographic camera: a new image that has
deeply and irrevocably affected our desire, behaviour and the way we gaze at
and present ourselves to the world. At this point, nevertheless, we are writing
about the mirroring. And the mirroring alone, without the digital gaze of a
smartphone, has not changed. It is what it is. Here then lies the tension of
154 Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

paradox: there is only one type of mirroring. In a most restricting way, the
mirror has a single visual story to tell. But our gaze does not. Our gaze is a
force that never rests. ‘Our vision’, John Berger remarks, ‘is continually active,
continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself ’.11 In
our book, we tried to point out that the mirroring might be set, chained to its
place and material, but our vision is, most emphatically, our own. Personal
instead of public. Moving instead of static. The mirror creates and maintains
an illusion of pictorial objectivity of absolute truths. But we all look at things
differently: there is no such thing as a universal gaze. What we see in the
mirror is already partly constructed, mediated and transformed. We never
simply look at our mirroring. To look in the mirror is to build a bridge: our
gaze establishes a connection between our felt body and our mirror image
through which we come to know and recognize ourselves. We say that the way
we look in the mirror is reflected in the narratives we make about ourselves.
The mirroring, in this sense, is a strikingly powerful image and, in our times,
perhaps the most important.
To end, we return to where we started: a deer gazing in a mirror we set
up in an imaginary clearing of a forest. Through the course of our book we
realized that the mirror was a trap. We saw the deer falling in it as something
both expected and inevitable. We, therefore, started to think of mirror gazing
as a story about hunting and we came upon a clue, an insight: we, like the
deer, are prey in front of the mirror. An unusual kind of prey, for we are also
the ones making and setting up mirrors. There is a definite sense of agency
and control about our relationship with mirrors. And yet, as we examined this
relationship closer, we had to admit that the way we are directed in front of
mirrors (sometimes with a smartphone in hand) confirms the idea that it is
very possible for humans to become prey to their own self-reflection. So, let’s
imagine we now go and stand next to the deer. Our gazes meet in the looking-
glass. We propose an alliance – a gaze that connects. This way of looking will
allow us to reclaim ownership of our body (physical and virtual). Do we still
pass the test of mirror self-recognition? We certainly do. Passing the test is easy.
But perhaps the true challenge with our daily test of mirror self-recognition is
elsewhere: perhaps we should try failing it.
 Notes

Chapter 1

1 Philippe Rochat and Zahavi Dan, ‘The uncanny mirror: A re-framing of mirror
self-experience’, Consciousness and Cognition 20:2 (2011), pp. 204–13.
For a concise history of the human fascination with the mirror, see Mark
Pendergrast, Mirror Mirror: A History of the Human Love Affair with Reflection
(New York: Basic Books, 2003). For a recent collection of essays on this topic,
see Miranda Anderson, ed., The Book of the Mirror: An Interdisciplinary
Collection Exploring the Cultural History of the Mirror (Newcastle: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, 2007).
2 The word ‘mirroring’ can be understood both as a noun and a verb; we will use it
to designate both the process of mirror gazing and its product.
3 Philippe Rochat, ‘Origin of self-concept’, in G. Bremner and A. Foge, eds.,
Blackwell Handbook of Infant Development (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 191–212.
4 See Chapter 2.
5 Rochat and Zahavi, ‘The uncanny mirror’.
6 Gibson, J. J., The ecological approach to visual perception, Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1979.
7 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Vintage, 1993), p. 13.
8 Umberto Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1984), p. 207.
9 This was first observed by art historian Ernst H. Gombrich in his classic, Art and
Illusion (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1960), p. 5.
10 See the discussion of relevant phenomena and psychiatric studies in Chapters 2
and 3.
11 For a good review of some experimental evidence on people’s beliefs about
how the size of mirror images changes with distance, see Marco Bertamini and
Theodore E. Parks, ‘On what people know about images on mirrors’, Cognition
98:1 (2005), pp. 85–104.
12 Lambros Malafouris, How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material
Engagement (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013).
156 Notes

13 Tim Ingold and Gisli Palsson, eds., Biosocial Becomings: Integrating Social and
Biological Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
14 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2010). Diane Coole and Samantha Frost, ‘Introducing the new
materialisms’, in Pheng Cheah, Melissa A. Orlie, and Elizabeth Grosz, eds., New
Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2010), pp. 1–43.
15 Martin Holbraad and Morten Axel Pedersen, The Ontological Turn: An
Anthropological Exposition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
16 In Barad’s performative sense, see Karen Barad, ‘Posthumanist performativity:
Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter’, Signs: Journal of
Women in Culture and Society 28:3 (2003), pp. 801–31. Karen Barad, Meeting the
Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).
17 In the context of Jane Bennett’s theory of ‘vibrant matter’, the term ‘vitality’ refers
to ‘the capacity of things – edibles, commodities, storms, metals – not only to
impede or block the will and designs of humans but also to act as quasi agents
or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own’. Bennett’s
main aspiration with this theory ‘is to articulate a vibrant materiality that runs
alongside and inside humans to see how analyses of political events might change
if we gave the force of things more due’ (Bennett, Vibrant Matter, p. viii). This
conception of vitality is of course very close in meaning, and partly it derives
from the terms ‘actant’ or ‘actantiality’, which occupy a prominent place in the
vocabulary of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as developed among others by
the prominent anthropologist of modernity Bruno Latour. See Bruno Latour
Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007). Malafouris have developed a related material
engagement approach proposing notions of metaplasticity and material agency;
see Malafouris, How Things Shape the Mind.
18 Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature. A Necessary Unity (New York: Bentam
Books, 1979), p. 14.
19 Tim Ingold, The Life of Lines (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2015).
20 Ibid.
21 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Rhizôme, Introduction (Paris: Editions
de Minuit, 1976). Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus:
Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1988).
22 Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description
(Abingdon-on-Thames: Taylor & Francis, 2011), p. 160, emphasis in original.
 Notes 157

23 Malafouris, L., ‘Thinking as “thinging”: Psychology with things’, Current

Directions in Psychological Science 29:1 (2020), pp. 3–8.
24 Caroline Humphrey, ‘Inside and outside the mirror: Mongolian Shamans’ mirrors
as instruments of perspectivism’, Inner Asia 9 (2007), pp. 173–95.
25 Alfred Gell, ‘Vogel’s net: Traps as artworks and artworks as traps’, Journal of
Material Culture 1:1 (1996), pp. 15–38.
26 Rane Willerslev, ‘Not animal, not not-animal: Hunting, imitation, and empathetic
knowledge among the Siberian Yukaghirs’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute 10 (2004), pp. 629–52; Rane Willerslev, Soul Hunters: Hunting, Animism,
and Personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs (London: University of California
Press, 2007).

Chapter 2

1 Hans Belting, An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body (Princeton NJ:

Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 9–10.
2 Lambros Malafouris and Colin Renfrew, eds., The Cognitive Life of Things:
Recasting the Boundaries of the Mind (Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute for
Archaeological Research, 2010).
3 Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, p. 211.
4 Gordon G. Gallup, James R. Anderson, and Steven M. Platek, ‘Self-recognition’,
in Shaun Gallagher, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Self (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), pp. 1–55, 15–16.
5 Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, p. 210.
6 William J.T. Mitchell, ‘What is an image?’ New Literary History 15 (1984),
pp. 503–37, 503.
7 Foucault, M., The care of the self: The history of sexuality, Volume 3, New York:
Pantheon, 1986.
8 Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, p. 207.
9 Bertamini and Parks, ‘On what people know about images on mirrors’, pp. 85–104.
10 Rochat and Zahavi, ‘The uncanny mirror’, p. 2.
11 Ibid.
12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nmu3uwqzbI (see 0:55). Ghost Dance is an
independent, improvisation British film relished in 1983. It explores the concept
of ‘Ghosts’, memory and technology, especially cinema. It is directed by Ken
McMullen. Screenplay by Ken McMullen.
13 Ibid., 1:05.
158 Notes

14 Lambros Malafouris, ‘Learning to see: Enactive discovery and the prehistory

of pictorial skill’, in Klaus Sachs-Hombach and Jörg R.J. Schirra, eds., Origins
of Pictures: Anthropological Discourses in Picture Science (Köln: Halem Verlag,
2012), pp. 73–88.
15 The term ‘bilocation’ describes instances in which an individual is or appears to feel
located in two distinct places at the same time. For a good review of the literature
relevant to the issue of self-localization, see Bartholomäus Wissmath, David Weibel, Jan
Schmutz, and Fred W. Mast, ‘Being present in more than one place at a time? Patterns
of mental self-localization’, Consciousness and Cognition, 20:4 (2011), pp. 1808–15.
16 Malafouris, Learning to See.
17 O. J. Grüsser and T. Landis, ‘The splitting of “I” and “me”: Heautoscopy and
related phenomena’, Visual Agnosias and Other Disturbances of Visual Perception
and Cognition 12 (1991), pp. 297–303. Blanke Olaf and Shahar Arzy, ‘The out-of-
body experience: Disturbed self-processing at the temporo-parietal junction’, The
Neuroscientist 11:1 (2005), pp. 16–24.
18 Barthes, Camera Lucida.
19 Ibid., p. 13.
20 Francesca Anzellotti, Valeria Onofrj, Valerio Maruotti, Leopoldo Ricciardi,
Raffaella Franciotti, Laura Bonanni, Astrid Thomas, and Marco Onofrj,
‘Autoscopic phenomena: Case report and review of literature’, Behavioral and
Brain Functions 7:2 (2011), p. 2.
21 Ibid., p. 3.
22 The German word ‘Doppelganger’ was introduced in 1796 by the novelist Jean
Paul Richter, who defined the word as follows: ‘So heissen Leute, die sich selbst
sehen’ (So people who see themselves are called). Ibid., p. 1.
23 For a biographical sketch and brief review of his contribution to visual anthropology
especially on understanding the impact of film and photography on traditional
tribal peoples, see Harald Prins and John Bishop, ‘Edmund Carpenter: Explorations
in media & anthropology’, Visual Anthropology Review 17:2 (2001), pp. 110–40.
24 Edmund Carpenter, ‘The tribal terror of awareness’, in Paul Hockings, ed.,
Principles of Visual Anthropology (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 451–61.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid., p. 481.
27 Carpenter also writes about a mysterious mirror a government patrol discovered
hidden in a thatched roof. The patrol was looking for stolen salt – mirrors where
not forbidden in the Papuan plateau. And yet, the use of that mirror, carefully
wrapped in bark and hidden away remained an unsolved riddle. Carpenter never
discovered its purpose or the reason it was concealed and out of sight (ibid.).
 Notes 159

28 Ibid., p. 482.
29 Ibid., p. 483.
30 Ibid., p. 190.
31 Ibid., p. 483.
32 Alfred Gell, ‘The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology’,
Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics 12 (1992), pp. 40–63, 44.
33 Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, p. 216.

Chapter 3

1 Laura Hurd Clarke and Meridith Griffin, ‘Visible and invisible ageing: Beauty
work as a response to ageism’, Ageing & Society 28 (2008), pp. 653–74.
2 Ibid., p. 671.
3 Justine Coupland, ‘Dance, ageing and the mirror: Negotiating watchability’,
Discourse & Communication 7:1 (2013), pp. 3–24, 4.
4 Ibid., p. 5.
5 Kathleen Woodward, Aging and Its Discontents: Freud and Other Fictions
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 62.
6 See Chapter 9 for more on this subject.
7 John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 8.
8 Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps, ‘Narrating the self ’, Annual Review of Anthropology
25 (1996), pp. 19–43.
9 Julia Twigg, ‘Clothing, age and the body: A critical review’, Ageing and Society 27
(2007), pp. 285–305, 298.
10 Woodward, Aging and Its Discontents, p. 62.
11 For more detailed discussion, see Chapter 8.
12 Even though the main target of beauty and fashion industry is women, men
are not off the hook. On the contrary, advertising is sending contradictory and
confusing messages to men. For a good case of the ‘double bind of Masculinity’,
see Susan Bordo, The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999).
13 Simon Blackburn, Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love (New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 2014).
14 Ibid., p. 57.
15 Marshall McLuhan, cited in Richard W Pollay, ‘The distorted mirror: Reflections
on the unintended consequences of advertising’, The Journal of Marketing 50:2
(1986), pp. 18–36.
160 Notes

16 Ibid., p. 23.
17 Eric Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate (New Jersey:
Transaction Publishers, 1978), p. 83.
18 Bernard Stiegler, Symbolic Misery: The Hyperindustrial Epoch, Volume 1 (Oxford:
Polity Press, 2014), p. 3.
19 Vance Packard, cited in ibid., p. 31.
20 Erica Reischer and Kathryn S. Koo, ‘The body beautiful: Symbolism and agency
in the social world’, Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004), pp. 297–317, 315.
21 Philippe Rochat, Others in Mind: Social Origins of Self-consciousness (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 1–2.
22 Ibid., p. 2.
23 Stiegler, Symbolic Misery, p. 2.
24 Rochat, Others in Mind, p. 3.
25 Clark Baim, Jorge Burmeister, Manuela Maciel, eds., Psychodrama: Advances in
Theory and Practice (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 83.
26 J. Miller, On Reflection (London: National Gallery Publications/Yale University
Press, 1998), p. 13
27 Foucault, M. (1987). ‘The ethic of care for the self as a practice of freedom: An
interview with Michel Foucault on January 20, 1984 in the final Foucault: Studies
on Michel Foucault’s last works’, Philosophy & Social Criticism 12: 2–3 (1987),
pp. 112–31.
28 Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (London: Random House, 1991), p. 82.
29 Ibid., p. 82.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., p. 83.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., p. 82.
34 Ibid.
35 Lambros Malafouris and Maria-Danae Koukouti, ‘How the body remembers its
skills: Memory and material engagement’, Journal of Consciousness Studies 25:7–8
(2018), pp. 158–80.
36 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Collin Smith
(London: Routledge & Degan Paul, 1962), p. 82.
37 Ibid., p. 146.
38 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (London:
Penguin Books, 1996).
39 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2007), p. 132.
 Notes 161

40 For an interesting read on the construction of the slender body ideal and body
management by capitalist society, see Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism,
Western Culture, and the Body (Berkely, California: University of California Press,
2004).
41 Enid Schildkrout (2004), ‘Inscribing the body’, Annu. Rev. Anthropol., 33,
pp. 319–44.
42 Abraham Ajibade Adeleke, Intermediate Yoruba: Language, Culture, Literature,
and Religious Beliefs, part II (Bloomington, Indiana: Trafford Publishing, 2011).
Olatunji Ojo, ‘Beyond Diversity: Women, Scarification and Yoruba Identity’,
History in Africa 35 (2008), pp. 347–74.
43 Anne Cloudsley, Women of Omdurman: Life, Love and the Cult of Virginity
(London: Ethnographica, 1983).

Chapter 4

1 Lewis Carroll, Alice through the Looking-Glass (London: Walker Books, 2005).
2 Pamela E. Haglund, ‘A clear and equal glass: Reflections on the metaphor of the
mirror’, Psychoanalytic Psychology 13:2 (1996), pp. 225–45, 266.
3 Carroll, Alice through the Looking-Glass, p. 46.
4 Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, ‘Cosmological deixis and Amerindian
perspectivism’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4:3 (1998),
pp. 469–88, 469.
5 Ibid., p. 470.
6 Carroll, Alice through the Looking-Glass, p. 153.
7 Viveiros de Castro, ‘Cosmological deixis and Amerindian perspectivism’,
pp. 470–1.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., p. 272.
10 Philippe Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 2013).
11 Ibid.
12 Sigmund Freud, ‘Beyond the pleasure principle’, The Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVIII (1920–1922):
Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works XVIII (1955),
pp. 1–64.
162 Notes

13 Jacques Lacan, ‘The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed
in psychoanalytic experience’, in J.A. Miller, ed. and A. Sheridan, trans., Ecrits:
A Selection (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977) pp. 97–104.
14 Ibid.
15 Haglund, ‘A clear and equal glass’, p. 229.
16 Timothy Morton, Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (London: Open
Humanities Press, University of Michigan Library, 2013), p. 17.

Chapter 5

1 Carroll, Alice through the Looking-Glass.

2 Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings (New York: Vintage, 2002).
3 Jorge Luis Borges, Dreamtigers trans. Harold Morland (Austin, Texas: University
of Texas Press, 1964).
4 Giovanni B. Caputo, ‘Strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion’, Perception 39:7 (2010),
pp. 1007–8.
5 Giovanni B. Caputo, ‘Archetypal-imaging and mirror-gazing’, Behavioral Sciences
4:1 (2013), pp. 1–13, 1.
6 J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (London: Bloomsbury,
1997).
7 Ibid., p. 152.
8 Ibid., p. 153.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., p. 157.
13 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Peterborough, Canada: Broadview
Press, 1998).
14 Ibid., p. 77.
15 Ibid., p. 89.
16 Ibid., p. 88.
17 Ibid., p. 77.
18 Ibid., p. 181.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., p. 183.
 Notes 163

22 Jacques Lacan, ‘The split between the eye and the gaze’, in Alan Sheridan, trans.,
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (New York: W. W. Norton,
1978), pp. 67–78 annotation by Phil Lee (Theories of Media, Winter 2003).
23 Giovanni B. Caputo, ‘Mask in the mirror: The living mask illusion’, Perception 40
(2011), pp. 1261–4.
24 Ibid., p. 1261.
25 Ibid., p. 1263.
26 Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems, ed. Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 2002),
p. 173.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.

Chapter 6

1 Humphrey, ‘Inside and outside the mirror’, pp. 173–95.

2 Rebecca Empson, ‘Separating and containing people and things in Mongolia’, eds.
Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad, and Sari Wastell in Thinking through Things
(London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 139–40.
3 Gregory Delaplace, L’invention de morts en Mongolie contemporaire: sepultures,
fantomes, photographie, unpublished doctoral thesis in religious anthropology
and ethnology (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris 2007) cited in Humphrey
‘Inside and outside the mirror’, p. 178.
4 Humphrey, ‘Inside and outside the mirror’, p. 178.
5 Empson, ‘Separating and containing people and things in Mongolia’, cited in
Humphrey, ‘Inside and outside the mirror’, p. 192.
6 For an interesting discussion on how, through Fantasy, modern people try to
safely experience the thrill of an enchanted universe, see Alan Jacobs, ‘Fantasy
and the buffered self ’, The New Atlantis 41 (2014), pp. 3–18.
7 ‘Shamans’ mirrors are circular, range between 6 and 12cm in diameter and are
forged from alloys that do not produce clear reflections’, note 11 in Katherine
Swancutt, ‘Representational vs. conjectural divination: Innovating out of
nothing in Mongolia’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12 (2006),
pp. 331–53.
8 Otgony Pürev, Mongol böögiin shashin (Ulaanbaatar: Mongol Ulsyn Shinjleh
Uhaaany Akademiin Tüühiin Hüreelen, 1998), in Humphrey, ‘Inside and outside
the mirror’, p. 188.
164 Notes

9 Humphrey, ‘Inside and outside the mirror’, p. 173.

10 Yuka Kadoi, ‘Translating form jing to mira’at/a’ina: Medieval Islamic mirrors
revisited’, Art in Translation 5:2 (2013), pp. 251–72.
11 Humphrey, ‘Inside and outside the mirror’, p. 192.
12 E. Loubo-Lesnitchenko informs us that imported Siberian mirrors are kept in the
museums of Minusinsk, the University Museum in Tomsk and in the museums
of Irkutsk, Kranoyarsk and Abakan, while collections of imported mirrors
exist in the National Historical Museum in Moscow, the National Hermitage in
Leningrad and the Museum in Helsinki, in E. Loubo-Lesnitchenko, ‘Imported
mirrors in the Minusink Basin’, Artibus Asiae 35 (1973), pp. 25–61.
13 Walter Heissig, The Religions of Mongolia (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1970), in Humphrey, ‘Inside and outside the mirror’, p. 177.
14 Ibid., p. 183.
15 Otgony Purev, Mongolian Shamanism, trans. G. Purvee, Richard Lawrence and
Elaine Cheng (Ullanbaatar: Munkhiin Useg, 2005).
16 Humphrey ‘Inside and outside the mirror’, p. 180.
17 Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, ‘Exchanging perspectives: The transformation of
objects into subjects in Amerindian ontologies’, Common Knowledge 10 (2004),
pp. 463–84, 468.
18 Pürev, Mongol böögiin shashin, cited in Humphrey, ‘Inside and outside the
mirror’, p. 187.
19 Ibid., p. 187 (Humphrey is referencing Purev and Sarangoa in relation to the
shamans of the Horchin area).
20 Observations concerning the powers of the mirror, the beliefs of the people in
relation to the mirror and life after death, as well as shamans’ practices refer to,
as Humphrey suggests, the Darhad of Hovsgol in Northwest Mongolia and the
Horchin of Eastern Mongolia. Also, to the Daurs and the Buryats. Humphrey,
‘Inside and outside the mirror’, p. 174.
21 Ibid., p. 189.
22 Japanese Mythology and Folklore, available online at: https://japanesemythology.
wordpress.com/notes-mirrors-in-history-and-mirror-superstitions/ (Accessed:
January 2018)
23 For some good examples, see George MacDonald et al., ‘Mirrors, portals and
multiple realities’, Zygon 23:4 (1998), pp. 39–64.
24 Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux and Jean-Pierre Vernant, Das l’oeil du miroir (Paris:
Éditions Odile Jacob, 1997).
25 Willard McCarty, ‘The shape of the mirror: Metaphorical catoptrics in classical
literature’, Aretusa 22:2 (1989), pp. 161–5, 174.
 Notes 165

26 Ibid., p. 175.
27 Ibid., p. 170.
28 Ibid.
29 Frontisi-Ducroux and Vernant, Das l’oeil du miroir, chapter 6.
30 Ibid.
31 Humphrey referring to Olziihutang and Gaadamba, ‘Inside and outside the
mirror’, p. 156.
32 Ibid., pp. 185–6.
33 Ölziihutag and Osor (1989), p. 128 cited in Humphrey, ‘Inside and outside the
mirror’, p. 186.
34 Ibid., p. 175.
35 Swancutt, ‘Representational vs. conjectural divination: Innovating out of nothing in
Mongolia’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12 (2006), pp. 331–53, 344.
36 Ibid., p. 344.
37 Humphrey, ‘Inside and outside the mirror’, p. 190.
38 Swancutt, ‘Representational vs conjectural divination’, p. 331.
39 Ibid., p. 331.
40 Ibid., p. 344.
41 Ibid., p. 350.
42 Old Mongolian riddle, cited in Humphrey, ‘Inside and outside the mirror’, p. 186.
43 Ibid., p. 190.
44 Raymond Tallis, The Black Mirror (London: Atlantic Books, 2016).
45 Ibid., p. 22.
46 Ibid., p. 27.

Chapter 7

1 Beulah Amsterdam, ‘Mirror self-image reactions before age two’, Developmental

Psychobiology 5 (1972), pp. 297–305. Gordon Gallup, ‘Self-recognition: Research
strategies and experimental design’, in Sue Taylor Parker, Robert W. Mitchell, and
Maria L. Boccia, eds., Self-awareness in Animals and Humans: Developmental
Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 35–50.
2 Rochat and Zahavi, ‘The uncanny mirror’, p. 212.
3 Malafouris, How Things Shape the Mind.
4 Alberto Corsín Jiménez and Chloe Nahum-Claudel, ‘The anthropology of traps:
Concrete technologies and theoretical interfaces’, Journal of Material Culture 24:4
(2019), pp. 1–18, 15.
166 Notes

5 Gell, ‘Vogel’s net’, pp. 15–38, 27.

6 Ibid., p. 27.
7 Ibid., p. 26.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., p. 27.
10 According to Eco, the mirror is not a sign but it is a prosthesis: ‘The magic of
the mirror lies in the fact that their extensiveness-intrusiveness allows us both
to have a better look at the world and to look at ourselves as anybody else might;
it is a unique experience, and mankind knows of no other similar one.’ Eco,
Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, p. 209.
11 Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, trans. Robert Baldick (London: Penguin Classics,
1965), p. 13.
12 Ibid., p. 30.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., pp. 30–1.
15 Ibid., p. 31.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Deleuse and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 200.
19 Sartre, Nausea, p. 31.
20 Ibid.
21 Gell, ‘Vogel’s net’, p. 29.
22 Willerslev, ‘Not animal, not not-animal’, pp. 629–52. Willerslev, Soul hunters.
23 Philippe Descola, ‘Beyond nature and culture: The traffic of souls’, HAU: Journal
of Ethnographic Theory 2:1 (2012), pp. 473–500, 474.
24 Willerslev, ‘Not animal, not not-animal’.
25 Ibid., p. 633.
26 The quote belongs to Waldemar Jochelson (1926) cited in Rane Willerslev, ‘Not
animal, not not-animal’, p. 634.
27 Ibid., p. 634.
28 Ibid., p. 635.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., p. 638.
31 Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Macmillan, 2001), p. 161.
32 Willerslev, ‘Not animal, not not-animal’, p. 635.
33 Ibid., p. 636.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid., p. 637.
 Notes 167

36 Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. & ed. Charles Martin (London: W.W. Norton, 2010).
37 Ibid., p. 75.
38 Ibid., p. 77.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid., p. 78.
41 Pierre Legendre, Peter Goodrich and Alain Pottage, ‘Introduction to the theory of the
image: Narcissus and the other in the mirror’, Law Critique 8:3 (1997), pp. 3–35, 1.
42 Ovid, Metamorphoses, p. 78.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid., p. 79.
45 Ibid., p. 80.
46 Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New
York: Routledge, 1993).
47 Ibid.
48 Willerslev, ‘Not animal, not not-animal’, p. 642.
49 Rane Willerslev, ‘Spirits as “ready to hand”: A phenomenological analysis of
Yukaghir spiritual knowledge and dreaming’, Anthropological Theory 4:4 (2004)
pp. 395–418, 410.
50 Ibid.
51 Willerslev, ‘Not animal, not not-animal’, p. 646.
52 Descola, ‘Beyond nature and culture: The traffic of souls’, p. 474.
53 See Eduardo, ‘Cosmological deixis and Amerindian perspectivism’, pp. 469–88.
Laura Rival, ‘The attachment of the soul to the body among the Huaorani of
Amazonian Ecuador’, Ethnos 70:3 (2005), pp. 285–310. Fernando Santos-Granero,
‘Beinghood and people-making in native Amazonia: A constructional approach with
a perspectival coda’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2:1 (2012), pp. 181–211.
54 Descola, ‘Beyond nature and culture: The traffic of souls’, p. 474.
55 Ibid., p. 482.
56 Ibid., p. 493.
57 Sontag, On Photography, pp. 178–9.
58 Jorella Andrews, Showing Off!: A Philosophy of Image (London: Bloomsbury
Publishing, 2014), p. 5.
59 Tim Ingold discusses a symbiotic versus a predatory relationship between man
and deer in his article ‘On reindeer and men’, Royal Anthropological Institute of
Great Britain and Ireland, Man, New Series, 9:4 (1974), pp. 523–38.
60 Gunter Gebauer and Wulf Christoph, Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society, trans. D.
Reneau (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
61 Willerslev, ‘Not animal, not not-animal’, p. 644.
168 Notes

Chapter 8

1 Rochat and Zahavi, ‘The uncanny mirror’.

2 Ibid., p. 9.
3 Carpenter, The Tribal Terror of Self-Awareness, p. 485.
4 Philippe Rochat, ‘Five levels of self-awareness as they unfold early in life’,
Consciousness and Cognition 12:4 (2003), pp. 717–31, 720–1.
5 Woodward, Aging and Its Discontents, p. 66.
6 Ibid., p. 62.
7 Jean Baudrillard cited in Andrews, Showing Off!, p. 4
8 Mirror therapy can be traced as far back as the eighteenth century in South Asian
Islamic medicine. Neil Krishan Aggarwal refers to the accounts of Muhammad
Akbar Arzani, an influential practitioner of Islamic medicine. In Arzani’s records,
he writes, we witnessed the beginning (as we so far know) of the mirror therapy
concerning the ‘Diseases of the Face’, a term Arzani used to describe facial
paralysis. The symptoms included a weakening of the senses like taste and smell,
as well as, the hanging down of bottom eye lid and mouth. The mirror involved
in the therapy was described by Arzani as a ‘Chinese mirror’(ibid., p. 3). It is a
mirror made completely out of metal – melted silver, copper or brass. One was
supposed to hold that mirror by cupping their hand against its edge, or by a
cord attached to the mirror’s back. The therapy involved, among other things,
the patient sitting in a dark room, looking continuously in the mirror held in
front of her or him. Like the shamanic mirror – a mirror also made completely
out of metal – the Chinese mirror could not and was not supposed to offer a
precise and clear face reflection. On the contrary, it was used because of its ability
to produce optical illusions: the multiplicity of views on its metallic surface
conveyed the illusion of straightness, as well as the illusion of movement, on the
reflection of the deformed and paralysed face of the patient. What is striking,
Aggarwal writes, is Arzani’s ability to value the mirror precisely for this ability:
the realization, in other words, that a number of deceptive mirror reflections, that
is, the reflections of a healthier face, would help the patient to eventually mobilize
the paralysed face (p. 3).
Neil Krishan Aggarwal. ‘Mirror therapy for facial paralysis in traditional South
Asian Islamic medicine’, Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 22:1 (2013), pp. 1–5.
9 Wyona Freysteinson, ‘Therapeutic mirror interventions: An integrated review
of the literature’, Journal of Holistic Nursing 27 (2009), pp. 241–52.Sherrie
Delinsky and Terence Wilson, ‘Mirror exposure for the treatment of body image
disturbance’, Internal Journal of Eating Disorders 39:2 (2006), pp. 108–16.
 Notes 169

Trevor Griffen, Eva Naumann, and Tom Hildebrandt, ‘Mirror exposure

therapy for body image disturbances and eating disorders: A review’. Clinical
Psychology Review 65 (2018), pp. 163–74.
10 Nili Tabak, Rebecca Bergman, and Rachel Alpert. ‘The mirror as a therapeutic tool for
patients with dementia’, International Journal of Nursing Practice 2 (1996), pp. 155–9.
11 J.M. Beis, J.M. Andre, A. Barre, and J. Paysant. ‘Mirror images and unilateral
special neglect’, Neuropsychologia 39 (2001), pp. 1444–50.
12 The technique of mirror exposure, as the term suggest, basically involves patients
systematically observing themselves in a full-length mirror ‘by taking a holistic
view as opposed to selectively focusing on body parts that elicit distress, to
describe it, to be non-judgmental, and to stay in the present. The goal of this
intervention is to help the patient shift from an automatic (and dysfunctional)
mind-set to a more controlled one in which she does not dwell on the past,
worry about the future, or try to avoid any unpleasant aspect of the experience.
The emphasis is on self-acceptance and tolerating negative feelings as they are
experienced in the moment. Patients with BN tend to automatically judge their
bodies in negative terms. Selective attention on real and perceived imperfections
is hypothesized to maintain their dysfunctional concerns about shape and
weight. This lack of self-acceptance generates frustration and negative affect,
trapping them in a continuing cycle of distress.’ See Delinsky and Wilson, ‘Mirror
exposure for the treatment of body image disturbance’, pp. 108–16, 109.
Griffen et.al., ‘Mirror exposure therapy for body image disturbances and
eating disorders’.
13 V.S. Ramachandran and E.L. Altschuler. ‘The use of visual feedback, in
particular mirror visual feedback, in restoring brain function’, Brain 132 (2009),
pp. 1693–710. J. Barbin, V. Seetha, J.M. Casillas, J. Paysant, and D. Perennou.
‘The effects of mirror therapy on pain and motor control of phantom limb in
amputees: A systematic review’, Annals of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine’
59:4 (2016), pp. 270–5.
L. Herrador Colmenero, J.M. Perez Marmol, C. Martí-García, M.D.L.Á. Querol
Zaldivar, R.M. Tapia Haro, A.M. Castro Sánchez, and M.E. Aguilar-Ferrándiz.
‘Effectiveness of mirror therapy, motor imagery, and virtual feedback on phantom
limb pain following amputation: A systematic review’, Prosthetics and Orthotics
International 42:3 (2018), pp. 288–98.
14 C.Y. Wu, P.C. Huang, Y.T. Chen, K.C. Lin, and H.W. Yang. ‘Effects of mirror
therapy on motor and sensory recovery in chronic stroke: A randomized
controlled trial’, Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 94:6 (2013),
pp. 1023–30.
170 Notes

15 A.S. Rothgangel, S.M. Braun, A.J. Beurskens, R.J. Seitz, and D.T. Wade. ‘The
clinical aspects of mirror therapy in rehabilitation: A systematic review of the
literature’, International Journal of Rehabilitation Research 34:1 (2011), pp. 1–13.
16 Frederik Deconinck, Ana R.P. Smorenburg, Alex Benham, Annick Ledebt, Max G.
Feltham and Geert J.P. Savelsbergh, ‘Reflections on mirror therapy: A systematic
review of the effect of mirror visual feedback on the brain’, Neurorehabilitation
and Neural Repair 29:4 (2015), pp. 349–61. Paul M. Jenkinson, Patrick Haggard,
Nicola C. Ferreira and Aikaterini Fotopoulou. ‘Body ownership and attention
in the mirror: Insights from somatoparaphrenia and the rubber hand illusion’,
Neuropsychologia 51: 8 (2013), pp. 1453–62.
17 Kenji Fukurama, Kenichi Sugawara, Shigeo Tanabe, Junichi Ushiba and Yutaka
Tomita, ‘Influence of mirror therapy on human motor cortex’, International
Journal of Neuroscience 117:7 (2007), pp. 1039–48.
18 Lone Nikolajsen and Troels Staehelin Jensen, ‘Phantom limb pain’, British Journal
of Anaesthesia 87:1 (2001), pp. 107–16 .See also Herta Flor, ‘Phantom-limb pain:
Characteristics, causes, and treatment’, The Lancet Neurology, 1:3 (2002), pp. 182–9.
19 See https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00483/full
(Accessed: May 2019)
20 Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Diane Rogers-, ‘Synaesthesia in phantom
limbs induced with mirrors’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B:
Biological Sciences 263:1369 (1996), pp. 377–86.
21 Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Eric Altschuler, ‘The use of visual feedback, in
particular mirror visual feedback, in restoring brain function’, Brain 132 (2009),
pp. 1693–710.
22 Lorimer Moseley, Alberto Gallace, and Charles Spence, ‘“Is mirror therapy all it is
cracked up to be?” Current evidence and future directions’, Pain 138 (2008), pp. 7–10.
23 Ramachandran et al., ‘The use of visual feedback, in particular mirror visual
feedback, in restoring brain function’.
24 Moseley et al., ‘Is mirror therapy all it is cracked up to be? Current evidence and
future directions’, p. 7.
25 Ramachandran et al., ‘The use of visual feedback, in particular mirror visual
feedback, in restoring brain function’.
26 Shaun Gallagher, ‘Philosophical conceptions of the self: Implications for
cognitive science’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4:1 (2000), pp. 14–21.
27 Philippe Rochat, ‘Self-conscious roots of human normativity’, Phenomenology
and the Cognitive Sciences 14:4 (2015), pp. 741–53.
28 Philippe Rochat, Tanya Broesch and Katherine Jayne, ‘Social awareness and early
self-recognition’, Consciousness and Cognition 21:3 (2012), pp. 1491–7.
 Notes 171

29 Rochat and Zahavi, ‘The uncanny mirror’, p. 9.

30 Rochat et al., ‘Social awareness and early self-recognition’, p. 1496.
31 Rochat and Zahavi, ‘The uncanny mirror’, p. 9.
32 Ibid.
33 Rochat, Others in Mind.
34 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 174.
35 Ibid., pp. 174–5.
36 Merleau-Ponty, ‘Eye and Mind’, in J. Edie, ed., The Primacy of Perception and
Other Essays (Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 129.
37 According to neuroscientist Manos Tsakiris, this question is crucial for
understanding mirror self-recognition, and more specifically face recognition in the
case of humans. Manos Tsakiris, ‘Looking for myself: Current multisensory input
alters self-face recognition’, PLoS ONE 3:12 (2008), e4040. https://journals.plos.org/
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38 Diana, ‘Reflecting on mirror Self-misrecognition’, Neuropsychoanalysis 11:2
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39 Karen Postal, ‘The mirror sign delusional misidentification symptom’, in
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40 Chandra Sadanandavalli Retnaswami and Thomas Gregor Issac, ‘Mirror image
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41 Nora Breen et al., ‘Mirrored-self misidentification’. Michael H. Connors and Max
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42 Lambros Malafouris, ‘Thinking as “thinking”: Psychology with things’, Current
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43 Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, p. 216.
172 Notes

44 Maria Danae Koukouti and Lambros Malafouris, ‘Material imagination: An

anthropological perspective’, in A. Abraham, ed., The Cambridge Handbook of the
Imagination (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2020) pp. 30–46.
45 Foucault, ‘The ethic of care for the self as a practice of freedom’, p. 131.

Chapter 9

1 Lambros Malafouris, ‘Enactive discovery: The aesthetic of material engagement’,

in R. Manzotti, ed., Situated Aesthetics: Art beyond the Skin (Exeter: Imprint
Academic, 2011), pp. 123–41.
2 Rochat, ‘Five levels of self-awareness as they unfold early in life’, pp. 720–1.
3 Terence S. Turner, ‘The social skin’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2:2
[1980] (2012), pp. 486–504. This is a reprint of Terence S. Turner, ‘The social
skin’, in Jeremy Cherfas and Roger Lewin, eds., Not Work Alone: A Cross-cultural
View of Activities Superfluous to Survival (London: Temple Smith, 1980), 112–40.
4 Gell, ‘Vogel’s Net’, p. 31.
5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXQB7RFzoFM (Accessed: January 2018)
6 Bernard Stiegler, ‘Suffocated desire, or how the cultural industry destroys the
individual: Contribution to a theory of mass consumption’, Parrhesia 13 (2011),
pp. 52–61, 54.
7 Ibid., p. 54.
8 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.
9 Lambros Malafouris, ‘Before and beyond representation: Towards an enactive
conception of the Palaeolithic image’, in Colin Renfrew and Iain Morley,
eds., Image and Imagination: A Global History of Figurative Representation
(Cambridge: The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of
Cambridge, 2007), pp. 287–300.
10 Hans Belting, An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body (Princeton NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 36.
11 John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 2008), p. 9.
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 Index

abduction 20 an-image 143

advertising 11, 35–42, 65, 131, 159 process of 26, 142
industry 11, 38, 131 Belting, Hans 18, 153
slogans 36 Benjamin, Walter 121
aesthetic 19–20, 37, 151 Berger, John 154
conditioning 37 Biami 26–7, 58, 115
investigation 37 terror of self-awareness 133
traces and signs 60 bilocation 23–5, 143, 158
practices 36 fear of self- 26
affect 8, 12, 22, 81, 85, 90 illusion of 23
affective 110, 129 terror of 27–8, 143
power 25, 151 body 1, 3, 5–6, 20, 22–5, 33, 36, 41–5, 58,
affordances 5, 134–5 60, 72–3, 84, 87, 90, 92, 97, 105,
agency 4–5, 12, 32, 37, 51, 149, 154, 169 114, 116–24, 133–9, 143–4, 145–6,
illusion of 18 149–51, 154, 169
vacuum of 18 ageing, 134
of traps 105 beautiful 38
ageism 32 commodified 11
Amazonia 55, 111, 124–30, 149 detachment of one’s 25
Amerindian 53, 55–6 fragmented 11
people 51 free 142
perspectivism 52 inscription 43, 140
amputees 13, 135, 137, 140, 154 incorporation 140
analogism 56 image 135, 169
animism 53, 56–7 liberated 142
anticipation 104, 107, 132, 139, 148 marks 44
Anzellotti, Fransesca 25 memory 41
Aristotle 90–1 mirrored 19, 34, 45, 98, 140, 143
attention 5, 11, 43, 67, 113, 118, 152 modification 43
modes of 8 ownership of 13
autoscopy 5, 25 phantom 140
phenomenal 28
Bateson, Gregory 9 without organs 142–43
Barthes, Ronald 5, 24 borders 10, 58, 81, 84, 94, 98–9, 115,
Baudrillard, Jean 134 145
beauty 31–4, 38, 40–5, 69, 71–2, 83, hazy 84
119–21, 139 ontological 96
industry 34–5 permeable 79, 81
beautification 89–90, 150–1 Borges, Jorge Luis 64–6, 81, 145
becoming 3, 8, 12, 58, 80, 112, 115, 123, boundaries 84
129, 147, 148, 152 ontological 85
184 Index

Blackburn, Simon 35 Deleuze, Gilles 9, 142–3, 152

boundary 70, 121 Derrida, Jaques 22–3
objects 2, 27 Descola, Philippe 56–7, 111, 124–9
Butler, Judith 42 desire 35, 37, 67–9, 76, 86, 107, 117,
119–20, 131, 143, 152–3
Caputo, Giovanni 64–7, 73–4, 76–7 disenchantment 17
capitalism 152 disgust 37–8, 75
capitalist divination 85, 92–3
ethos 2, 152 dreaming 76, 83–4
society 44, 139, 152
care 5, 12, 39, 83 Eco, Umberto 6, 18, 20–1, 146
of our bodies 151 ecology 105
for self 39–40 of mirroring 5, 148
visual ethos of 107 of perception 148
Carpenter, Edmund 26–7, 57, 143, 158 of seeing 17
Carroll, Lewis 49–53, 55, 57–8, 63, 86, 145 enactive 146
causality 9 discovery 147
object-oriented view 60 signification 104
cinema 23 signs 106
Clarke, Laura Hurd 32 enchantment 5, 13, 20–1, 24, 28, 81,
Cloudsley, Anne 43–4 147–8
consciousness 3, 55, 148, 152 imaginary 81
critical 151 technology of 27
of the oppressed 41 embodiment 105
self- 56, 103, 135, 148, 151 transgressive 144
consumerism 11, 39, 134, 152 empathy 123
cosmetic 31–2, 36, 40, 45, 150 Empson, Rebecca 79–80
surgery 42–3 entanglement 105
cognitive between hunter and prey 106
ecology 5 estrangement 9, 105
life 18 ethnography 10, 11, 44, 51, 55, 81, 93, 104,
contingency 20 111, 116
temporal 19 and fiction 52
Corsín Jiménez, Alberto 104 ethos 107
creative gaze 60 capitalist 2, 152
creativity 19, 60 visual 107
critical 7 exchange 124–5, 127–9, 143
anthropological stance 4, 10 abnormal 145
function of philosophy 147–8 egalitarian 128
mirroring 148, 151 mimetic 10
self-consciousness 135, 148, 151 participatory 130, 145, 148–9
culture 26, 36, 38, 53, 89, 111, 121, 141, soul 128
146 experience 11, 17, 19–21, 24–7, 34, 38, 40,
of discontent 39 45, 51, 57–8, 73, 81, 91, 94, 115–6,
image-obsessed 41 120, 139, 141–4, 150
media 153 of aesthetic investigation 37
plurality of 53 disembodiment of 70
popular 11, 33 of missing self-parts 140
visual 147 painful 34
 Index 185

of selfhood 3 re-presentational 24
self-alienation 114 and reality 133
self-transformation 116 strange-face 65–7
seeing through 138, 146 therapeutic 135
of transparency 147 of transparency 22, 133, 135
unsettling 66 imagination 1, 11, 21, 36, 52, 57, 59, 64,
visual 25, 34 69, 75–6, 81, 98, 115, 138–9, 146,
152
face 5–7, 21, 25, 29, 31–2, 34, 40–5, 57, gaze of 54, 57, 60
61, 70, 72, 74–7, 93, 98, 108–9, 115, material 138, 146
119–20, 144, 149–52 and reality 27, 51
ageing 75 individualism 134
exhibited 33 Ingold, Tim 9
invented 33 intentionality 19, 55
recognition software 150 interoception 133
of victimization 132
saleable 151 Jivaros 111, 124–30
strange 63–8, 73–4
faceless 109 knots 52
Foucault, Michael 21, 147
Freud, Sigmund 58 Lacan, Jacques 58–9, 72
Frontisi-Ducroux, Francoise 89 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 125
Lucretius 90
Gell, Alfred 27, 105–6, 110, 151
Gombrich, Ernst 6, 21, 36 magic 3, 12, 27, 36, 41, 64, 67–9, 74, 82,
Griffin, Meridith 32 145
Guattari, Félix 9, 109, 142–3, 152 sympathetic 121, 123
manioc 124, 127, 130
habit 4, 27–8, 103, 106, 130, 143, 147, marks 42–5, 150
152 on our bodies 44
habituation 17 mask 72–3, 112
hallucinosis 24 Shinto 73–6
Harry Potter 67–9, 76 matter 9, 18
headhunting 125 organized 106
healing 87, 134–8, 146 material 5, 22, 69, 133, 138, 154
mirror 13 agent 82
qualities 134 engagement 8, 104
techniques of 135 imagination 138, 146
tool 134 memories 60
heautoscopy 25 semiotics 135
hemiplegia 136, 138 signs 103, 106, 114
Hirst, Damien 151 trace 20, 28
Humphrey, Caroline 12, 79–88, 91–2, 96 materialism 11
new 8
illusion 4–7, 22, 54, 58, 76, 99, 119, 136–8, materiality 105, 145
151, 154, 168 vital 9
of agency 18 mirror mark test 141, 144
of bilocation 23 McCarty, Willard 89–90
living mask 73 McLuhan, Marshall 26, 36
186 Index

memory 19–20, 24, 28, 36, 41–5, 52, 126, education of 17

140, 151 mimetic modes of 121
in scars 150 self- 51
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 41, 144 perceptual 17, 22, 24, 147
metamorphosis 112 anxiety of mirror-gazing 17, 134
metaphor 9, 10, 12, 89–95, 111, 128 habit 147
mimetic 1, 3, 121, 131 illusions 6
bond 121 person 4, 11, 17, 26, 33, 35, 42–3, 49, 51–3,
device 2, 5 55–6, 64, 66, 84–9, 94–7, 99, 105,
exchange 10 108–9, 117, 124–6, 143–5, 151,
function 3 153
machines and media 19 non-human 11, 112, 124, 134
modes of perception 121 personal narrative 4, 34, 37, 45, 108, 140,
practice 112 150–1
transaction 1 personhood 51, 98, 111, 114
trap 113 loss of 116
mimicry 11, 20, 23–4, 28, 104, 110, 123, 129 and nonhuman agency 51
hunting 114 perspectival 8, 11–12, 51
transformative 12 animism 57
mirror agnosia 144, 147 perspectivism 51–2, 57
Mitchell, William 20 fictional 53
Mongolia 12, 79, 80–5, 99, 146 phantom limb 135–8, 146
Buryats of 12 phantomachia 22–3
multiculturalist cosmologies 53 phenomenology 5, 99, 144
multinatural 53 photographic 22–3, 153
double 24
Nahum-Claudel, Chloe 104 image 5, 24, 115, 153
Narcissus 80, 89, 118–123, 134 photography 19, 24, 115, 153
naturalism 56 Plath, Sylvia 74–5, 92, 145
Pliny 91
ontology 8, 57 pretend 104, 123, 145
ambivalent 20 proprioception 133
animist 124 prosthesis 107
perspectivist 124 visual 133
process 9 psychopathology 13, 26, 135
relational 8
representational 115 Ramachandran, Vilayanur 137
ontological 8, 96, 124–5 reciprocity 111, 124–6, 129
boundaries 85 re-presentation 6, 11, 145
multiplicity 8–9 re-presentational
pluralism 9 illusion 24
turn 8, 57 mobility 23
resistance 8, 142, 39, 41
pain 134–9 act of 11
phantom 135–9 gaze of 41
Papua New Guinea 26 Rochat, Philippe 4, 38–9, 141, 150
participation 104, 123, 145 Rogers-Ramachandran, Diane
perception 7–8, 20, 25, 28, 32, 66, 123, 153 137
ecology of 148 Rowling, J.K. 67–9
 Index 187

Sartre, Jean-Paul 107, 109, 118, 120 recognition 26, 58, 104, 108, 134–5,
scaffolding 59 141, 143–4, 150, 154
scar 31, 42–5, 71, 150 recognition device 104
scarification 43–4 recognition test 150
seduction 12, 119, 121–3, 131 reflection 27, 39, 57, 68–9, 73, 76, 89,
self 21, 24–5, 28, 33–5, 40–3, 58, 69, 72, 119–20, 131, 148, 154
74, 80–1, 90–2, 97–9, 107, 109, sense of 59, 65
112–16, 120–3, 126, 132, 134, 139, specification 109
142–3, 147–9 surrender 123
as a social spectacle 143 symbolic 27
absorbed gaze 148 tracking 134
absorption 35, 37, 123 transformation 116, 149
acceptance 135 technologies of the 21
adoration 120, 131 selfhood 3, 124, 149
alienation 114 bodily 140
awareness 27, 34–5, 65, 67, 71, 107, experience of 3
114, 118, 139, 143, 145, 150 narrative 140
becoming 115 sense of 113
bilocation 26 selfie 130–1
bodily 133, 150 mirror 118, 130, 153
care for 40, 134 semiotic 6, 17, 20, 105, 110, 134
consciousness 12, 38, 56, 103, 135, 148, conflation 18
151 double bind 106
consuming 147 field of subjectification 104
continuity 125 material 135
digital 118 skill 2, 5, 8, 12, 19, 39, 58, 105–6, 128, 140,
discovery 27, 50 145, 152
doubt 139 skin 32–5, 38, 40, 42–5, 55, 71, 142, 150–1
examining gaze 36 ageing 33–4, 151
identity 33, 39, 114, 130 mirrored 45
identification 12, 104, 108, 110, perfect 36
149 social 150
image 11, 13, 22, 24, 26, 33, 65, 109–10, Siberian 82, 129
115, 130–2, 140, 147, 150–1 Yukaghirs 12
imaging 17, 18 signs 20, 32, 44, 60, 141
inspection 80, 89 enactive 106
knowledge 12, 22, 59, 77, 90, 104, material 103, 106
107–8, 144 signification 20
localization 27 enactive 104
loss of the, 114 Sontag, Susan 115, 130
love 132, 147 soul 70–2, 74, 76, 83–9, 99, 110–11, 117,
misidentification 144 123–4, 127, 128
narratives 140, 153 exchange 124, 128
organ-less 143 soulless 71, 132
parts 140 spirituality 52
perception 51 Stiegler, Bernard 37, 39, 152
phantom 65, 145 Subjectivation 140
physical 22–4, 27, 118–19 Sudan 43
presentation 141, 152 Swancutt, Katherine 92–3
188 Index

symbiosis 128 umwelt 106

sympathy 22, 129 unlearning 8, 147–8
sympathetic magic 121, 123
synchronicity 20, 24, 136 Vernant, Jean-Pierre 89
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo 51, 53–7,
Tallis, Raymond 96–8 85
Taussig, Michael 121
thinging 10, 145 Wilde, Oscar 69–72
togetherness 58, 60 Willerslev, Rane 111–17, 123, 131
totemism 56 Wolf, Naomi 40–1
transformation 10, 70, 87, 112, 114, 117, Woodward, Kathleen 34, 134
123, 143, 148–9, 153
self- 8, 149 Yukaghirs 12, 111–12, 114, 116–17, 122–3
stories 116
Tukanos 111, 124–7, 129–30, 149 Zahavi, Dan 141
Turner, Terence 150
189
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