History of the Senses

Cannibals and Orchids: Cannibalism and the Sensory Imagination of Papua New Guinea

by Ilaria Vanni

This article examines Leona Miller’s book Cannibal and Orchids (1941) as an example of how place, in this case Papua... more This article examines Leona Miller’s book Cannibal and Orchids (1941) as an example of how place, in this case Papua New Guinea (PNG), is imagined according to a particular sensorium. It follows the ‘sensory turn in anthropology’ and the studies developed in the last two decades that take the senses as their object of enquiry. This body of theory is mobilised to analyse Miller’s biographical narrative recounting how PNG is imagined, represented and produced in terms of a disarray of the (Western) senses, coalescing in the trope of cannibalism. This article argues that the experience of PNG as the place of otherness is narrated both in terms of the author’s sensory displacement and of the indigenous sensorium as abject.

Vectors of Making: senses, spaces, and the formation of publics

by Marlene Eberhart

Forthcoming.

Sensing, Time and the Aural Imagination in Titian's Venus with Organist and Dog

by Marlene Eberhart

Published in 'Artibus et Historiae', 2012

Inner Senses—Outer Senses: The Practice of Emotions in Medieval Mysticism

by Niklaus Largier

Globalization or the Journey of the Disembodied towards Tactility (essay in Bengali language)

by Abhijit Roy

Montage, issue 6, November 2005

A political economy approach towards Globalization, the networked world and the new sense of 'geography', the emerging... more A political economy approach towards Globalization, the networked world and the new sense of 'geography', the emerging political significance of the new media. Looks into how the image and the sound aspire to be tactile as part of Capitalism's larger politics of presenting the de-territorialized network as sufficiently intimate and 'corporeal', how, in other words, the sign increasingly tries to appropriate the 'referent' in the new configuration of 'distance' and 'proximity'. The over-arching structure of this agency however has many aporias. I surely would have written the essay differently now, especially after the 'Arab Spring' and the 'velvet revolution', without changing the basic argument.

La pelle umana / The human skin (Micrologus, XIII, 2005), SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo, Firenze, 2005; in Critica del testo VII/3, pp. 1209-1219.

by Gaia Gubbini

MUSICAL MODERNITY AND CONTESTED COMMEMORATION AT THE FESTIVAL OF REMEMBRANCE, 1923–1927

by James G. Mansell

The Historical Journal, 52 (2009)

This article makes the case for incorporating music into the history of war commemoration in 1920s Britain by... more This article makes the case for incorporating music into the history of war commemoration in 1920s Britain by examining John Foulds's A World Requiem, performed at the British Legion's first Festivals of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall between 1923 and 1926. A simultaneously modernist and spiritual work, Foulds's Requiem challenges Jay Winter's conclusion that modernism was unconcerned with public grief. The controversy which the Requiem caused also reveals the contested nature of public memory, particularly where music and religion were concerned. The Requiem's axing in 1927 points to a hegemonic process which, although it had yet fully to take shape, found no room on Armistice Night for Foulds's progressive ideals

The Human Snout: Pigs, Priests, and Peasants in the Parlor

by Joe Nugent

Published in "Senses and Society," 2009

Ireland reeked throughout the nineteenth century from the pages
of English representation.
The reputed... more Ireland reeked throughout the nineteenth century from the pages
of English representation.
The reputed stench of its cabins, cesspools, and dungheaps became a shameful index of national backwardness and the essential mark of Irish olfactory identity. In response to the odor of primitiveness that clung to them also, Ireland’s rising middle classes set about a program of national decontamination. Led by the emblematic figure of native Victorian propriety, the Catholic priest, this modernizing class carried the mantras of civility and hygiene to the countryside and the rural home, imposing upon a recalcitrant peasantry a new, “enlightened,” olfactory register predicated on an intolerance of traditional odors. The groundwork for this transformation was the castigation of Ireland’s domestic cottage by English observers and, in particular, the metonymic substitution of the peasantry’s pigs for Irish national character – a discursive reordering that, though it encountered resistance from a peasantry devoted to an old Gaelic order of sensory values, was completed
and even sanctified by a Catholic Church bent on producing modern, disciplined subjects. The smells of everyday life, as a result, took on new meanings. This paper examines Irish and British literary and historical texts around the turn of the twentieth century to uncover that meaning and expose the role of olfaction in the production of the peculiar Gaelo-Catholic ideology of domesticity that until recent decades governed rural Ireland.

C-kasetit suomalaisten käyttäjiensä aistimuistoissa [C-cassettes in the sensory recollections of their users]

by Kaarina Kilpiö

Tekniikan Waiheita 4/2011 pp. 39-54 [http://www.ths.fi/ths_english.htm]

Of all the big changes in music listening during 1970s, the easy, mobile compact cassette technology was the biggest... more Of all the big changes in music listening during 1970s, the easy, mobile compact cassette technology was the biggest innovation from the viewpoint of the so-called general listener. Among music listening formats, c-cassette technology has a mass-produced, low status image. Cassettes as artefacts are thus remembered for the material they contain and the often socially significant activities they hark back to, and not so much for their intrinsic value, as vinyls or cd’s. This article (in Finnish) analyses written memories of Finnish c-cassette users, focusing on sensory-related recollections. Sensory and emotionally charged expressions are frequent within the written data and they help to build an understanding of a Finnish cassette culture on the individual user’s level.

6. Il "Paradiso" dei sensi. Per una metaforologia sinestetica in Dante

by Valentina Atturo

published in "Critica del testo", XIV/2, 2011, "Dante, oggi"/2, pp. 425-264.
An expanded version in a new monographic book (forthcoming).

The study deals with the synaesthetic webs of sensorial metaphors, which, placed in a more articulated intratextual... more The study deals with the synaesthetic webs of sensorial metaphors, which, placed in a more articulated intratextual context, are most apt for transforming in experience Dante’s journey in «Paradiso». In the cognitive-perceptive system of the «Comedy», Dante depicts the most intense moments of paradisiacal ascent through a tactile, gustatory and olfactive perception leading to the point of mystical “conjunction” /SIGHT + TOUCH/ (Pd. 33, 80-81).
In conformity with the philosophical and theological reflection typical of Cisterciensian and Victorin authors, Dante prefers an approach grounded on the “affections” (affectiones) rather than one more focused on rationality, within the parameters of the Spiritual Senses doctrine. From this more affective standpoint, Dante pushes the viator’s will towards ever more profound mental dimensions.

Il tatto e il desiderio in una querelle trobadorica: Bernardo di Ventadorn e Marcabruno, in Critica del testo. Sensi, sensazioni e sentimenti, VIII/1, pp. 281-313.

by Gaia Gubbini

Cardiosensory Impulses in Late Medieval Spirituality

by Heather Webb

In Rethinking the Medieval Senses: Heritage/Fascinations/Frames, ed. by Stephen Nichols, Andreas Kablitz and Alison Calhoun (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 265-285.

Review: and Andrew Jacobs, Scents of Facts or Whiffs of Confusion?: The Scent of Desire: Discovering our Enigmatic Sense of Smell, by Rachel Herz

by Matthew Milner

To Captivate the Senses: Sensory Governance in Heresy and Idolatry in Mid-Tudor England

by Matthew Milner

in Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe, eds. Wietse de Boer, Christine Goettler, Herman Roodenburg (Leuven: Brill, forthcoming 2012).

Throughout mid-century England, c.1520-1558, heresy trials and polemics on idolatry used the language of captivation... more Throughout mid-century England, c.1520-1558, heresy trials and polemics on idolatry used the language of captivation to describe how heretics and idolaters had lost control of their senses. My paper will explore how reformers like John Lambert or Hugh Latimer were told by traditionalists at their trials to 'captivate’, 'rule', or 'keep' their senses, while evangelicals like William Tyndale and others cast idolatry as the sensory subservience of viewers to images. In tracing such language the paper will expose the extent to which mid-sixteenth-century religious upheaval in England was shaped by well-established facets of late medieval and renaissance sensory culture – one which stressed the need for sensory discipline for moral and religious correctitude. Time-honoured metaphors of the senses as rebellious servants, gates, or animals, helped articulate the dangers of religious upheaval and cast one’s opponents, whether evangelical or conservative, as sensual transgressors. Recounting this use of sensory language does much to undermine belief charges of sensuality were only employed by evangelical reformers; rather, accusations of sensory misgovernance were essential tools of religious polemic. Exploring the sensory language of captivation casts the reformation as a pyschomachia, a battle between virtue and vice, one in which sensory governance and metaphor had anything but a small role to play.

History of the Senses

by Hannu Salmi

in: 20th International Congress of Historical Sciences 3-9 July 2005. Programme. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Sydney 2005, pp. 187-190.

“Sentidos, experimentos e instrumentos científicos en Francis Bacon”. Manuscrito, Revista Internacional de Filosofía (Brasil), 24 (2001) 1, 49-85

by Silvia Manzo

Graham Rees has, for some time, questioned the traditional image of
Bacon’s method by drawing attention to the... more Graham Rees has, for some time, questioned the traditional image of
Bacon’s method by drawing attention to the importance of quantitative reasoning in
Bacon’s programme for the renewal of knowledge. I intend to continue the
reevaluation begun by Rees of the central concepts of Baconian method through an
examination of the role of experimentation and of scientific instruments and the
relation between reason and the senses. In order to do this the following topics will
be discussed: the role of the senses as sources of scientific knowledge, and the function
of experimentation and scientific instruments in overcoming the limitations of the
senses; the concept of the subtlety of nature, and the methodological sense of
Baconian anatomy. In conclusion, I shall point out that in the Baconian method the
senses are subordinated to reason, since both experiments and scientific instruments
are subject to the authority of reason if they are to attain truth and avoid error.

Sensual, material, and technological understanding: exploring prehistoric soundscapes in south India

by Nicole Boivin

‘Experiencing Place: Ocularcentrism and Merleau-Ponty’s Redeeming of the Role of Vision’

by Isis Brook

published in the Journal for the British Society for Phenomenology Vol. 33:1 2002 pp. 68-77

Ocularcentrism is the term used to express the emphasis that Western culture places on the visual sense.  The... more Ocularcentrism is the term used to express the emphasis that Western culture places on the visual sense.  The claim is not just that we tend to use our eyes more than other senses, but that we value knowledge gained through the visual sense more than that gained by hearing, smell, touch and the kinaesthetic sense.  An additional feature of the concept is that this valuing of sight has determined the way we understand knowledge, and what counts as knowledge, as that which can be construed visually.  Indeed our terminology for thoughts, concepts, and ideas uses visual metaphors .  We see, we have insights, we speculate and this style of thinking will of course have an impact on what we look for and the kinds of evidence we accept as yielding knowledge.  I will briefly outline some of the historical and conceptual pointers to the idea of ocularcentrism.  This will provide a framework within which to examine a statement by Walter Ong about the propensity to turn all that is seen into surfaces - even interiors.  Ong's critique extends to what he sees as a necessary superficialising of our encounters with the world, and each other, through the tying of abstract visualism to our idea of reality.  I will explore three examples of encounters with interiors which will underline our usual visual dominance and experiment with giving attention to the other senses for a more rounded account of the experience.  The examples will then be used to explicate two aspects of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology.  One, the experience of our being "caught in the fabric of the world", and two, the possibilities of a reappraisal of the visual, in its experienced form, as including depth, colour and communication with the other senses.