Umwelt and time: Extending the humanistic view on temporality through umwelt theory

Abstract

The article offers a discussion on the way in which the concept of umwelt can be related to the conceptualization of time and temporality in the humanities – in dialogue with other theoretical frameworks as well as with artistic discourse. The paper examines how Jakob von Uexküll himself wrote about time in the context of his umwelt theory, and goes on to consider how his thought has been creatively developed in the field of biosemiotics. This part of the discussion refers to Kalevi Kull’s recent ideas on ‘momentary umwelt’ and ‘umweb’ and proposes enhancing these concepts by employing classic Saussurean categories of signs relations, namely, syntagmatic and paradigmatic orders. The next section offers further extending of the proposed considerations to another level, i.e. juxtaposing them with the thought of Bruno Latour and his concept of ‘situated time’. This idea is compared to the conceptualization of time within both the momentary umwelt as well as the umweb. Finally, the last part of the paper is dedicated to analysing the previously presented theoretical discussion in the light of a mathematical model of the Möbius strip and artistic discourse: Mieke Bal’s thoughts on time and Osmo Valtonen’s kinetic sculpture Circulograph.