Life and Imaginal Texture of the Surrounding World (Umwelt)

Ideas for an Ethological and Cinematographic Realism of the Animal-image

Abstract

The article proposes an interpretation of some aspects of the Umwelt theory formulated by Jacob von Uexküll, in which the possibility of studying what is here called the imaginal texture of the surrounding world of animals, as material that composes their perceptual, affective and motor experiences, is developed. To this end, a realism of images is defended through a dialogue between, on the one hand, the sensory-motor scheme of biosemiotics, the synthesis between physiology and environment of sensory ecology, the Eco Evo Devo approaches and the neurobiological theory of the self presented by Antonio Damasio; and, on the other hand, part of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of cinema and Gilbert Simondon's philosophy of images. From this point of view, the possibility of an ethology of the animal-image is raised, capable of studying the moving folds of matter under the signs of cinema and biology. Special emphasis is placed on the problem of zoological subjectivity as a biological image, through a critique of the animal subject in Uexküll, with a Kantian root. Just as Uexküll proposed a musical image of nature that opened his understanding for the study of animal behavior, this article aims to develop another type of aesthetic potencies that are inherent to his thought, in order to deploy a cinematographic image of nature that accounts for the ethological and ontological status of the living-images that are organisms themselves