Anthropologist Tim Ingold's studies offer an interesting contribution to the interdisciplinary investigation and reflection on the relationship between the biological, material, and cultural worlds (see, for example, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skill). On September 16, 2023, he gave a lecture at the Modena, Carpi, and Sassuolo Philosophy Festival, entitled Writing. The Craftsmanship of Lines, which offers an illuminating interpretation of the relationship between the natural world, the natural human way of experiencing it, and writing and reading practices.
Material and immaterial culture are brought into proximity by an argument not without suggestive force, as when he suggests that we might think of «the [natural] ground as a veil of intermediation, not [...] a plane of separation [...]. This veil, however, dresses, does not conceal, does not disguise, it is a revelation [...]. The veil is the ground, and this ground does not hide the depths of the earth beneath the surface, but we sense the depth in the surface [...]. Can we say the same thing about a page? […] Like a very industrious farmer, the scribe himself takes care of his lines as they grow on the surface.»
A parallel, that between soil and writing, which recalls that proposed in other intellectual and cultural contexts, between reading the traces that living beings leave on the ground and the evidential approach to reality that is said to be the basis of narrative and literature (see, for example, C. Ginzburg, Spie. Radici di un paradigma indiziario, in Crisi della ragione, edited by Aldo Giorgio Gargani, Einaudi, 1979).
Ingold traces the evolution from manual writing to the birth of printing and then to electronic writing. This evolution, inevitably impacting reading, presents a progressive shift in which performance based on manual skill and auditory experience gives way to the prevalence of the cognitive nature of attention, with inevitable consequences for humankind's relationship with the page, the world, and systems of knowledge: «Those who read printed works no longer experience the page like travellers who live or inhabit their land.» The consequences are problematic, and the lecture also explores these issues. And concluding a talk dedicated to changes that have profoundly affected humanity, Professor Ingold also proposes a solution to serious challenges we may face in the near future, and an unexpected prediction of what the not-too-distant future might hold…
Video lesson Writing. The Craftsmanship of Lines
