The essay in analysis, written by Dr Constance Clasen, a cultural historian who specialises in the History of Senses, talks about the concept of anthropology of the senses by explaining what it means and what it represents in academia, and which ways are taken now.
She introduces the paper by affirming the necessity of unwesternisation of the perspective of the senses, referring that we (westerners) perceive the world as one of the many possibilities of ways, and should not be seen as the only and most advanced one. She compares, how many cultures use sight to describe social relations.
in “Foundations for an anthropology of the senses”
Within Western history we find, aside from the customary grouping into
five senses, enumerations of four, six or seven senses described at different periods by different persons. Thus, for example, taste and touch are sometimes grouped together as one sense, and touch is sometimes divided into several senses
This affirmation is supported by a breakdown of three assumptions that society over the senses, and on which Constance considers to be the impediments that a scholar must fight for. They are:
- Senses are precultural: Senses aren’t “purely biological in nature (…)”. Social codes is proof of this affirmation, and Classen uses the example of sight in different cultural contexts – “To stare at someone may signify rudeness, flattery or domination depending on the circumstances and the culture. Downcast eyes, in turn, may suggest modesty fear, contemplation or inattention”.
- “Sight is the only sense of major importance”: this is what anthropology of the senses mostly argues about. “Sight came to distance itself significantly from the other senses in terms of cultural imortance only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centures, when vision beacame associated with the burgeoning field of science” and it was even more exalted with Darwin and Freud.
- The perspectives of some anthropology scholars: scholars like Marshall McLuhan and Water Ong, argue that the “sensory model of a society is determined by a its technologies of communication”.
While reading this part, I thought about how art nowadays focuses more on sight than on the other senses. On the PDF I noted: “This article destroys most of the arts lectured in this collage”. The film is one of the arts that was already addressed by Jacques Rancière, who postulates against the supremacy of image over sound, and the other senses.
It is also interesting, to understand whether this perspective could be applied in our practice as sound artists. Taking the work of Francisco Lopéz and Pauline Oliveros into consideration, these two teach us how to enhance listening and also try to differentiate the terms to listen and to hear. It makes me conclude, that sound art is a neo-western reflection of sound. It also takes me back to my research for sound installation where I was trying to connect both senses of touch and hearing, which has a fundamental scientific investigation done by the Acoustical Society of America.