An Anthropological Guide to the Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

The ability to look at one’s face in the mirror and the ability to find one’s self in the mirror are two quite different things. The former is a natural capacity that humans share with other animals; the latter is an acquired skill that only humans can master. The craft of mirror-gazing,despite its relevance to daily life is barely understood.
An Anthropological Guide to the Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing provides a metaphysical manual to understand it. The book is written from a cross-disciplinary and object-based perspective. The role of the mirror as a technology of self-objectification is explored through various case studies of cultures such as the Buryats of Eastern Mongolia. By using various anthropological examples, Koukouti and Malafouris survey and reflect on the structures and experiences of consciousness that underpin the specular image and the different meanings of the self. By combining metaphor, comparison and estrangement – where what was thought of as natural is seen as deliberately caused and altered – this book weaves together ethnographic description and philosophical analysis with empirical examples and experimental studies that allow the reader to think about the world and their subjectivity a bit differently.