To appear in Sisa Calapi, Helma Korzybyska, Marie Mazzella di Bosco, & Pierre Peraldi-Mittelette (eds.) « Sensibles ethnographies. Decalages sensoriels et attentionnels dans la recherche anthropologique.» Paris : Éditions PÉTRA, 2020. « Univers sensoriels et sciences sociales » series under the direction of Marie-Luce Gélard.
Next-Generation Sensory Anthropology
David Howes
Centre for Sensory Studies
Concordia University, Montreal
“Sensuous scholarship” is the name Paul Stoller (1997) attributed to the burgeoning interest in the senses as both subject of study and means of inquiry that has swept over anthropology and cognate disciplines in recent decades. The sensory turn came after the linguistic turn of the 1970s (whence the idea of cultures as “structured like a language” or “as texts”) and the pictorial turn of the 1980s (whence visual anthropology and visual culture studies), and the corporeal turn of the 1990s, which gave rise to “embodiment” as a paradigm for research (Csordas 1990). Sensory anthropology, in addition to calling out and seeking to correct for the logocentrism of the linguistic turn and the visualism of the pictorial turn, has introduced a further refinement to the corporeal turn. In place of the latter’s insistence on such constructs as the “embodied mind” or “mindful body,” sensory anthropology has directed attention to the way in which, in some cultures, the mind is regarded as a sense that is on a par with the other senses, instead of lording it over them, and it also emphasizes the importance of attending to how the senses may conflict, as well as coalesce. Just as there are different ways of discriminating and/or conjoining mind or spirit and body across cultures, there are many different ways of discriminating the senses, and of combining them in assemblages that depart significantly from the bureaucratization, hierarchization and commodification of the senses in mainstream Western culture (Jones 2018)
In addition to its focus on charting the varieties of sensory experience across cultures, sensory anthropology has highlighted the importance of attending to intracultural diversity. This point was first signalled by Constance Classen in her classic UNESCO journal article, “Foundations for an Anthropology of the Senses” (1997). It was reiterated by Classen and the present writer in the introduction to Ways of Sensing: “Anthropologists must be attentive to intracultural variation, for there re typically persons or groups who differ on the sensory values [and practices] embraced by the society at large, and resist, instead of conform to, the prevailing sensory regime” (Howes and Classen: 2014: 12). This point is underscored again by the editors in their introduction to this volume.
The method of choice for exploring these cross- and intracultural differences in the life of the senses is sensory ethnography. Francois Laplantine aptly sums up the gist of this approach: “The experience of [ethnographic] fieldwork is an experience of sharing in the sensible [partage du sensible]. We observe, we listen, we speak with others, we partake of their cuisine, we try to feel along with them what they experience” (Laplantine 2015: 2). Thus, ethnography involves sensing and making sense together with others. It swaps participant sensation for the older anthropological method of participant observation, and employs the senses, as well as their extensions via diverse practices and media, for ethnographic purposes. Laplantine himself has used cinema as a lens through which to study Japanese society (2010, and in his latest publication (2020) he enlists dance choreography, the body in motion, to “think the sensible.”
Apart from Laplantine’s recent work, the publication of A Different Kind of Ethnography (Elliott and Culhane 2017) also testifies to this ongoing multiplication of the modalities of anthropological research. Anthropology is no longer the “discipline of words” (as typified by the ethnographic monograph) it once was. In their introduction to DKE, Denielle Elliott and Dara Culhane alert the reader that: “In each chapter of this book you will find participatory exercises that invite you to write in multiple genres, to pay attention to embodied multisensory experience, to create images with pencil and paper and with camera, to make music, to engage in storytelling and performance as you conceptualize, design, conduct, and communicate ethnographic research” (2017: 3).
The six chapters that follow each focus on a different means of investigation, or mode of perception-action-expression and communication. The first chapter concerns “imagining,” the second “writing,” the third “sensing,” the fourth “recording and editing,” the fifth “walking” and the sixth “performing.” It bears noting that even the chapter on writing goes well beyond the old and rather prosaic notion of writing as “thick description” (Geertz 1973): this chapter includes a discussion of drawing and poetry as research methods, and when it does turn to discuss writing, the examples cited, such as Kathleen Stewart’s Ordinary Affects (2015) are far from dry. Stewart approaches writing as a form of “worlding” which captures “emergent perceptions.” With her pen, it is a sensational, rather than representational, form of inscription.
The sensory awakening that first gave rise to the social anthropology of the senses (Stoller 1989; Howes 1991) has since spread to other sectors of the discipline, whence the linguistic anthropology of the senses (Majid and Levinson 2011), and archaeology of the senses (Hamilakis 2014; Skeate and Day 2019), and also crossed over into other disciplines in the wake of Alain Corbin’s seminal essay “Histoire et anthropologie sensorielle” (1990). “Sensory studies” is the name given to this highly dynamic, interdisciplinary field of inquiry centred on the sensible, which is increasingly international as well (see Bull et al 2006; Gélard 2016a, 2016b; Sabido Ramos 2018). What is particularly noteworthy (and gratifying) about this collection of essays, edited by Sisa Calapi, Helma Korzybyska, Marie Mazzella di Bosco, & Pierre Peraldi-Mittellette, is that it is testimony to the extent to which sensory anthropology has also gone intergenerational.
What is the next generation up to? There are lots of exciting departures signalled by this edited collection. Some of the more salient themes include: the focus on intracultural diversity, which was originally flagged by Constance Classen, as noted above, but Classen’s call went largely unheeded,1 until now. Helma Korzybyska, explores the sensory world of blind persons who have received retinal implants; Anna-Livia Marchionni presents an intimate ethnography of the non-neurotypical sense-experience of persons on the autistic spectrum; Pierre Peraldi-Mittellette, describes how the members of an ethnic minority, the Touareg living in diaspora in Europe, stage gatherings at which they wear the colourful costumes of their homeland, prepare and consume food in the customary way, and exchange touches All this enables them to feel at home while living apart. Peraldi-Mittelette’s case study raises interesting questions for a geography of the senses, such as where is home anyway? (see further Low 2005)
Another theme is the heightened reflexivity displayed by the contributors. Marchionni reflects at length on whether she can really attune her senses to tap into the ostensibly hypo- and hypersensations of her non-neurotypical interlocutors. Anthropologists of the previous generation, such as Tim Ingold, did not think such reflexivity necessary, and affirmed the “prereflective unity” of the senses instead (see Howes and Ingold 2011, Howes 2019).
A third theme is their attention to gauging intensities in place of interpreting (or deconstructing) signs and symbols. Sisa Calapi observes that the sound of the conch when the Visperas of Turucu roll out is more than a signal, it is a force, and she goes on to show how this links up with traditional Andean notions of bulla, energia and fuerza. She also registers the “kinaesthetic contagion” of the movements of the dancers, which generates “collective euphorias” (Laplantine would approve)2 Sensory ethnography can be a sweaty (and exhausting) business, as Marie Mazzella di Bosco brings out with exceptional candour in her account of what it was like to dance feely with strangers at the numerous sessions of Danse des 5 Rythmes, Movement Medicine and Open Floor she participated in over the space of a year. I loved the way she swapped the notion of “mise-en-sens” for that of mise-en-scène in her description of the ambiance of the studios (the scented candles, the lights, the draperies, the humidity, the beat, etc.). Meanwhile, Elena Bertuzzi dares to speak of the “qualities of presence” in the songs and movements of the debaa dance (which is of Sufi inspiration) performed by women on Mayotte. It was not so long ago that any talk of presence was banished from the academy, under the censorious weight of the Derridean concept of différance. I dare any surviving poststructuralist to deconstruct the “multisensorialities” (a fourth theme) described by Bertuzzi, Mazzella di Bosco, or Calapi in their respective contributions to this volume: the perceptions of their research subjects are already inter- and crossmodal (see further Spence 2018)
A fifth theme is the experimentation with alternate media that, for example, Korzybyska shows when she uses line drawings and watercolours in her attempt to evoke the pixel-like flashes that blind people who have received retinal implants “see” (Elliott and Culhane would be impressed by the creative methodology of this essay). And then there is Anaïs Angeras’ fascinating account of her experience building and inhabiting yourts and other “light” dwellings for over a decade. Hers was a sensory apprenticeship unlike any other in the literature. She became intimately familiar with the sensory properties of the building materials she sourced, and once she had finished constructing her habitats (without-footprints), she was struck by the porosity of the relationship between the inside and outside of these structures, most notably the sounds of all the tiny creatures in the (living) walls.
To round out this discussion of next-generation sensory anthropology, I would like to present some of my own students’ work. Mark Doerksen defended his Ph.D. thesis in Social and Cultural Analysis in 2018. In it, he reports on his field research in Canada and the U.S.A. in a subculture of the body modification movement known as grinders (Doerksen 2018). Grinders are not satisfied with the normal allotment of senses. They implant magnets in their fingers so as to be able to sense electromagnetic fields, and Doerksen followed suit so that he could sense along with them what they experience. There is no dedicated vocabulary for electromagnetic sensation; nor are there any medically-approved procedures for fashioning an “nth sense,” as Doerksen (2017) calls it. Grinders must therefore improvise, or “hack,” as they say, when they practice DIY surgery. Their reports of their experience of an otherwise insensible dimension of the material environment, (e.g. the “buzz” they get from a microwave) represent an intriguing opening, and underscores the need for a theory of the materiality of perception. Grinders could be likened to the X-men of Marvel Comic fame, only instead of their supersensory powers being the result of some genetic mutation, they develop their own sensory prostheses, which include not only implanting magnets but also ingesting chemicals and following strict dietary regimes. However, no self-respecting grinder would ever concur with this analogy, for they are rigorous counter-culturalists, including popular culture.
Marie-Josée Blanchard is currently writing her Ph.D. thesis. For her doctoral research as a student in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Ph.D. program at Concordia, Blanchard is engaged in a study of classical Indian dance, both in India and the diaspora. Her research focuses on arriving at an understanding of rasa. Rasa means savour or essence and also includes emotion in its spectrum of referents. One goes to a performance of Indian dance not to see it, but rather to “savour” the emotions conveyed by the gestures and movements of the dancers. This calls for a certain recalibration of the senses, since the idea is that one should taste and see, instead of merely perceiving the spectacle through one’s eyes. She asks: How does the practitioner of classical Indian dance learn to channel the eight rasas (Shringara: The Erotic, Bibhatsa: The Repulsive, Vira: The Heroic, etc.) through their body for the delectation of the audience, and what do they feel in the process? This is a fascinating research question, and the only way to begin to answer it is through the practice of participant sensation (Blanchard 2020).
Roseline Lambert recently returned to Montreal from Oslo, Norway where she had been conducting field research among people living with agoraphobia.3 Norway has the highest incidence of agoraphobia in the world. She purposely took up residence in the same quarter of Oslo as the painter Edvard Munch, the most famous agoraphobe of all time, who secluded himself in his studio for the last thirty years of his life. Does agoraphobia have to do with the quality of the light in Scandinavia, Lambert wondered aloud, since Norwegians tend to talk about light the same (obsessive) way that other people talk about the weather? What can be learned from studying the way agoraphobes attend to things, such as windows? One thing about which Lambert is (fairly) certain is that agoraphobia cannot be reduced to a spatial disorder, the way it is normally treated in the literature (Lambert 2020). I should add that Lambert is an award-winning poet (for Les couleurs accidentelles, 2018), as well as a student of anthropology. Her methodology is accordingly directed at opening up the terrain “between art and anthropology” (Schneider and Wright 2010), or what here in Quebec we call “research-creation/recherche-création.” She will, accordingly, be committing her experience, and that of her research subjects, to poetry – the most sensuous form of writing. I can’t wait to read the first chapter of her thesis, which is due in one month’s time.
To sum up, what distinguishes next-generation sensory anthropology from that which has gone before is an interest in exploring nonnormative “perceptual paradigms” (Classen 1997). This has resulted in the foregrounding of a range of new objects of study – from the ephemeral (non-ontological) architecture of “light housing” to sketching the pixel-like flashes of light experienced by the blind person who has undergone a retinal implant 4 – all of which stretch the bounds of sense in novel, uncharted directions. Sensory ethnography is booming, dazzling, contagious, perplexing – and deeply intensive and absorbing. As Michel Serres would say, and the contribution to this volume attest, “If a revolt [in scholarship] is to come, it will have to come from the five senses” (quoted in Howes 2016)
Acknowledgment
These reflections are the outcome of many years directing and participating in the research endeavours of the Concordia Sensoria Research Team (CONSERT, founded in 1988) with the financial support of the Social sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et Culture, and the Australian Research Council, for which I am deeply grateful. To get a taste for one of our latest research forays – a sensory ethnography of the Casino de Montréal – see Lynch, Howes & French (2020). I wish to thank the editors of this volume for their request to write this preface. It has been an honour (and pleasure) to comply.
Notes
1. This was largely Ingold’s doing. In The Presence of the Environment he excoriated Classen (and the present writer) for “uphold[ing] a notion of cultures as consisting in systems of collective representations, over and above the conditions and contexts of practical life within which people develop and embody their own skills of action and perception” (Ingold 2000: 284). There is a world of difference between the emphasis on intracultural variation in Classen and the emphasis on individual diversity in Ingold. The latter is socially impoverished, whereas Classen brings out numerous examples of the division and conditioning of the senses along class, and gender, and ethnic lines, as well as so-called disability (Classen 1998; Howes and Classen 2014) One is hard pressed to find any discussion of class or gender or ethnicity in Ingold’s work.
2. The avant-garde composer John Cage would also have deeply appreciative of the blending of musical and extramusical sounds in the Visperas of the communeros of Turucu, I suspect. Cage belonged to the cosmopolitan avant-garde of New York City (and Black Mountain College). There is also the remote avant garde of places like Turucu, or the community art centres of the Australian Western Desert (Biddle 2016, Miyarrka Media 2019). For a deeply compelling ethnography and theorization of the work of the remote avant gardes see Biddle 2016.
3. When they were comfortable with the idea, Lambert would meet with her research subjects in person; otherwise, she would conduct interviews online – intimations of the self-isolation which would become de rigueur with the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic this past March. Agoraphobes are experts at confinement, she mused, and I responded that I think we could learn much from the study of their techniques of sensing and coping with the world within and without the walls and windows of our habitats (see further Schneider Gil n.d.; Fletcher 2005)
4. I must say that Korzybyska’s account in “Investir le ‘regard’ des personnes devenues aveugles ” is one of the finest examples I have yet come across attesting to the proposition that “The senses are made, not given” and exposing the woeful inadequacy of Ingold’s dogma of “direct perception” (see Howes 2019). It takes attunement – the acquisition of specific ways of sensing – to “see,” not just the presence of light
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