Pub Date : 2023-05-16DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2023.2210034
Moumita Bala, Smriti Singh
ABSTRACT The elephants are the most important animal characters in Nirmal Ghosh’s novella River Storm, and they both metaphorically and literally permeate the entire story. This article explores how viewing these animals through the lens of sensory ecology enables more accurate identification of the ways in which the elephants’ olfactory, tactile, and auditory senses help in communicating with their environment and a better comprehension of the nonhuman perspective. It also tries to illustrate why understanding an elephant’s sensory capabilities is necessary to acknowledge the non-human perspective in a society where humans predominate. Drawing on the premises of Jakob Von Uexkull’s umwelt theory, this study acknowledges the elephants’ agency by contradicting humans’ generic conception of animals as objects or symbols or allegorical subjects in the epistemology of literary discourse about animals. To emphasize the elephant’s distinctive perception of the environment, the narrative specifically moves beyond the boundaries of human perception. Furthermore, it clarifies how an elephant interacts with their surroundings using their sensory faculties, how misinterpretations of their umwelt can result in a number of conflicts between humans and elephants, as well as how a clear understanding of the elephant world can result in a cordial relationship between humans and elephants.
大象是尼马尔·高希的中篇小说《河流风暴》中最重要的动物角色，它们无论是隐喻性的还是字面性的都贯穿于整个故事中。本文探讨了如何通过感官生态学的视角来观察这些动物，从而更准确地识别大象的嗅觉、触觉和听觉帮助它们与环境沟通的方式，并更好地理解非人类的视角。它还试图说明，为什么在人类占主导地位的社会中，理解大象的感官能力对于承认非人类视角是必要的。本研究以雅各布·冯·于克斯库尔(Jakob Von Uexkull)的本体理论为前提，通过反驳人类在关于动物的文学话语认识论中将动物视为对象、符号或寓言主体的一般概念，承认了大象的能动性。为了强调大象对环境的独特感知，故事特意超越了人类感知的界限。此外，它还阐明了大象是如何利用自己的感官与周围环境相互作用的，对它们所处环境的误解是如何导致人与大象之间的一系列冲突的，以及对大象世界的清晰理解是如何导致人与大象之间的友好关系的。
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Pub Date : 2023-05-04DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2023.2210035
Maya Caspari
ABSTRACT Through a discussion of Wanuri Kahiu’s short 2009 film Pumzi, this article illustrates how Afrofuturist film interrogates and extends normative theoretical paradigms for conceptualizing the intersections of technology and touch. Building on work in Black Studies, the article situates technology in the history of modernity, arguing that biopolitical modernity may itself be a kind of techno-touch – a “hold” – which produces an exclusionary, racialized construction of the human. It then turns Pumzi to show that, while the film situates technology in a long history of capitalist modernity, it also illustrates how liberatory possibilities for “otherwise worlds” may nonetheless emerge at touch and technology’s intersection. This occurs not only in terms of what it represents, but also in its status as an affective encounter in the world – a form of touch – in itself.
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Pub Date : 2023-05-04DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2023.2213082
M. Collins
{"title":"Christina Battle, the air we breathe","authors":"M. Collins","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2023.2213082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2023.2213082","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"1 1","pages":"198 - 202"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88315132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-03DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2023.2200065
I. Morrison
ABSTRACT Human touch has an enormous power to engender and mediate meaning in the human mind, from the emotional to the pragmatic, and from the linguistic to the symbolic. Can a functional-neuroanatomical perspective on social touch contribute to a general understanding of the biological workings of such meaning-making? I argue here that it can, and that the ways the brain accomplishes this are manifold. I identify and explore three main neural subsystems which operate in concert to generate the emotional and semantic complexion of social touch. These subsystems underlie how humans: 1) touch to connect with others; 2) explore the physical and social worlds; and 3) explain the significance of a touch within our own knowledge and experience, especially with regard to the way we interpret the world through language and culture. I therefore propose that what makes social touch meaningful has much to do with the functional and evolutionary roots of these brain subsystems. Although they can be distinguished and analyzed, in the “wild” human brain these subsystems are functionally intertwined, and their processes are integrated to generate a unified subjective experience of social touch. This view also acknowledges the intertwined nature of the embodied individual within society, thus carrying potential implications for theoretical analysis in such terms.
{"title":"Touching to connect, explore, and explain: how the human brain makes social touch meaningful","authors":"I. Morrison","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2023.2200065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2023.2200065","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Human touch has an enormous power to engender and mediate meaning in the human mind, from the emotional to the pragmatic, and from the linguistic to the symbolic. Can a functional-neuroanatomical perspective on social touch contribute to a general understanding of the biological workings of such meaning-making? I argue here that it can, and that the ways the brain accomplishes this are manifold. I identify and explore three main neural subsystems which operate in concert to generate the emotional and semantic complexion of social touch. These subsystems underlie how humans: 1) touch to connect with others; 2) explore the physical and social worlds; and 3) explain the significance of a touch within our own knowledge and experience, especially with regard to the way we interpret the world through language and culture. I therefore propose that what makes social touch meaningful has much to do with the functional and evolutionary roots of these brain subsystems. Although they can be distinguished and analyzed, in the “wild” human brain these subsystems are functionally intertwined, and their processes are integrated to generate a unified subjective experience of social touch. This view also acknowledges the intertwined nature of the embodied individual within society, thus carrying potential implications for theoretical analysis in such terms.","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"139 1","pages":"92 - 109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81762132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-13DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2023.2197684
M. Gross
ABSTRACT Attempts at changing individual car use behavior towards increased use of public transport have so far largely failed. This paper will argue that the continued rise in individual car use needs to be understood as part of an overall trend towards protecting oneself instead of protecting the environment, i.e. an individualized sensory response to an omnipresent collective threat. The car industry serves this trend perfectly with features that turn cars into “cozy” cocoons that protect passengers from the dangers of the outside world. Although the Covid-19 pandemic has fostered this trend, it has been inherent in the resistant nature of cars for decades. Thus, today cars are increasingly used for their sensory aspects related to safety and protection from an infectious, dirty, and violent outside world. This trend is supported by highly individualized cushioning and comfort factors that make cars “special places.” Any strategies for promoting alternative forms of transport thus need to consider these sensory developments when creating incentives for people to travel by train, bus, etc. instead of driving cars. The paper ends with a few speculations on how public transport could be made more attractive given the current role of sensory perception in car driving.
{"title":"Car driving as inverted quarantine and the sensory response to collective threats: challenges for public transport","authors":"M. Gross","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2023.2197684","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2023.2197684","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Attempts at changing individual car use behavior towards increased use of public transport have so far largely failed. This paper will argue that the continued rise in individual car use needs to be understood as part of an overall trend towards protecting oneself instead of protecting the environment, i.e. an individualized sensory response to an omnipresent collective threat. The car industry serves this trend perfectly with features that turn cars into “cozy” cocoons that protect passengers from the dangers of the outside world. Although the Covid-19 pandemic has fostered this trend, it has been inherent in the resistant nature of cars for decades. Thus, today cars are increasingly used for their sensory aspects related to safety and protection from an infectious, dirty, and violent outside world. This trend is supported by highly individualized cushioning and comfort factors that make cars “special places.” Any strategies for promoting alternative forms of transport thus need to consider these sensory developments when creating incentives for people to travel by train, bus, etc. instead of driving cars. The paper ends with a few speculations on how public transport could be made more attractive given the current role of sensory perception in car driving.","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"52 1","pages":"241 - 253"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79226008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-04DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2023.2197313
H. Wu
{"title":"Is revitalizing culture a beautiful dream? Objects, archives, and images of indigenous Taiwan in Hu Tai-Li’s documentary Returning Souls (2012)","authors":"H. Wu","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2023.2197313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2023.2197313","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88887284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-19DOI: 10.1080/17458927.2023.2190699
Hsuan L. Hsu
{"title":"Cold colonialism and sensory infrastructures","authors":"Hsuan L. Hsu","doi":"10.1080/17458927.2023.2190699","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2023.2190699","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":75188,"journal":{"name":"The senses and society","volume":"26 1","pages":"187 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78639389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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