I previously wrote On Garbage (1) and On the City (1); with that kind of momentum, this was clearly heading toward a series, yet after finishing “(1)” there was no follow-up. Thinking about it myself, I feel rather ashamed. In fact, I had already come up with the titles for Garbage 2 and 3—“Economy and Finance” and “Gestell and Absence”—but I just never got around to writing them (come on, hit me)……
In any case, my procrastination seems to have reached a terminal stage, and I need to find a way to treat it. The key to curing procrastination is to strengthen one’s ability to act, and to try to get started immediately whenever one thinks of something to do. So, well, let’s open another “(1)”……
“Mirror” is an important object in phenomenological philosophy of technology. I have also often discussed the issue of so-called “mirror–ification” before. I think the mirror is a typical technology, and it especially highlights the “mirror-like” characteristic of how human beings deal with the world through technology.
Research in philosophy of technology is diverse on the one hand: every specific technology can be analyzed in depth. But philosophy, as philosophy, is still ultimately trying to reveal universality, so what we discover in each specific technological activity is often also embedded within other technological activities. Heidegger discusses hammers and building, Stiegler discusses film, Hans discusses mirrors…… They are not all trying to study these concrete technical objects as such, but rather are facing the existence of the human being as a whole. Yet their analyses do indeed take different technical objects as their paradigms; the entry points differ, and they cannot simply replace one another. This is like how we always contemplate and examine a thing from different sides: from each side, after all, one can more or less also glimpse the aspects implied by the other sides, but each side also has its own distinctive features. Philosophical analyses of technology pursue human existence precisely by probing it from different sides. But how many kinds of technologies do we actually need to analyze in order to achieve a comprehensive grasp of human nature? In one sense, one is enough; in another sense, however many there are, it is still not enough.
Each technology has its own features, of course, but philosophy of technology or media philosophy always has certain “routines,” and for any technology there are ways to begin analyzing it. We can say that this routine is the phenomenological method, or perhaps the method of “media ecology.” My doctoral dissertation also tried to explain this method. In fact, when all is said and done, the simplest point of entry is “learning.” For any technology, we can begin with this question: “How is it possible to learn this technology?” Then we can pursue the matter from two angles, unfolding a speculative or historical inquiry: first, reflect on how an individual learns this technology, and what it means to have learned it; second, trace how a social community as a group learns this technology, and what the invention and dissemination of this technology mean for the corresponding human society.
Today I’ll talk a little about mirrors. Of course, we can also begin with this question: How is it possible to learn to look in a mirror? What does learning to look in a mirror mean?
Being able to learn to look in a mirror is often used to judge whether an animal possesses “self-awareness.” Of course, as for this “self-awareness judgment experiment,” I have already discussed it long ago: it is a visually centrist criterion, and obviously unfair to most animals that rely more heavily on smell, hearing, and touch.
Why does learning to look in a mirror concern self-awareness? Because “learning” does not merely mean having a sufficient understanding of the technical artifact that is the mirror; it also means having some understanding of oneself. In fact, learning any technology is simultaneously concerned with knowing the world and knowing oneself. In a certain sense, one might say that to learn a technology is to construct the boundary between self and world in the corresponding technological activity (“interface”).
Before computer screens appeared, the mirror was probably the most typical kind of “interface,” but this interface is especially striking because “I” appear on both sides of the mirror at once. Outside the mirror is the “I” who is in the world, while inside the mirror is the “I” as part of the world. On one side is the subject, the one who is looking; on the other side is the object, the one being looked at. These two “I” are strictly distinguished by the mirror surface, and at the same time tightly linked, so much so that I can adjust myself instantly through the mirror’s feedback.
Not knowing how to look in a mirror does not mean not knowing how to “look at a mirror,” but not knowing how to “look at oneself.” In a certain sense, other technologies are similar as well—being able to use a hammer means, in a certain sense, being able to “hammer oneself.” A mischievous child who cannot use a hammer, when handed one, is not unable to “hammer” things; on the contrary, he may hammer away indiscriminately, and in the midst of waving it about casually, smash all sorts of “objects.” But he can only smash “things”; he does not know how to grasp “himself” in those objects. For example: this is my goal, this is my work, this is the chair I want to repair, this is the walnut I want to smash……
Just as being able to look in a mirror means discovering “my……” on the other side of the mirror (my hand / my face / my movement), only when I can grasp “my……” in the objects of hammering activity have I learned the hammer.
That’s about all for the first installment. The theme of the second installment had already occurred to me before I even began writing “(1)”: “Reversal? Body and Writing.” A brief preview: the world in the mirror looks almost exactly the same as the normal world—so when does it make people feel “abnormal”? In fact, there are mainly only two situations: one is the left-right reversal of the body, and the other is the reversal of writing. How are these two phenomena of “reversal” possible?
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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