In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
A verse in Latin, from the poet Virgil, is translated as “we go round and round in the night and are consumed by fire.” This is a palindrome that can be read in either direction, producing a circular, infinite reading. In the poem, a few soldiers wander through the forest at night, they get lost and stop before a fire. They sleep until the fire burns into embers and then they continue wandering. For days they wander, losing themselves and being consumed by the fire, night after night. They end up ceasing to be soldiers, giving into consumption and wandering. They lose all reason for being, they lose their north, turning that forced we into a sum of concerns and desires that explode the military order in the prismatic multiplication of subjective possibilities.
Julia Morandeira's paper will sketch a tentative draft to start thinking the nocturnal —indicating the dark epistemologies and textural methodologies it invokes.
