The Minoan Midst: Ceramic Swirling Thought

Abstract

We shall study how swirling particulars are swept up into the movements of one another, just as, obversely, they localize the other with their own independent in-curling intensities and how such swirling localization is characteristic of Minoan “Being”, or their “Black”. To swirl into, and along with, another is to be caught up and curl into its arching bends. However, one is only partially held by the other, because it is more a matter of being attracted, drawn or entangled in a swirling movement than a being possessed by, or melted into, it. Each helps the other intensify their own particularity and recline back into the Black through which they are born(e). We shall try to get repeatedly caught up and swept along by the Minoan so that we can move ever deeper into our own contemporary being as well as theirs. If we keep trying to swirl along with their own swirling reflexions round the turnings of their pottery, then we shall be able to understand “swirling” as a distinctive way of being and movement and that will enable us to delineate space, time, the body and nature in wholly unexpected and non-Eurocentric ways.