Cultural Sensation?

Sensation must be understood as culturally anchored and forming. Sensation is a multi-sensorial, active process, which is both doing something and anchored in cultural hierarchies of the senses as we learn from Sensory Studies. Sensation is also a question of sensory justice. The following snippets from my PHD thesis published in 2023 expand on this and show the key scholary inspirations:

“According to David Howes and Constance Classen (Howes & Classen, 2014) senses must first and foremost be understood as sensation, as practiced. The senses are, as Howes (Howes, 2022c, p. 12) states in the first proposition on his Sensory Studies Manifesto, ‘…not simply passive receptors. They are interactive, both with the world and each other.’

Sensation has a mediating role between society and self, as well as between mind and body. Sensation is an active process, where all the senses can be active and can potentially lead to different and even contrasting sensations, as well as modulate each other (Howes, 2022a). Sensation must thus be considered plural - a multisensoriality, which occurs equally within the individual and ‘… out there in the environment (i.e. between sense organ and object)…’, which also makes it a public and social activity informed by the culture in which it occurs and co-creates (Howes, 2022a, p. 3). Howes (Howes, 2022a, p. 10) critiques the idea of a direct perception of the environment, which ignores signification. Instead, he offers an understanding of the sense in which signification and sensation flow into each other as in a continuum between the two:

‘Crucially, sensory studies plays up the double meaning of the term “sense.” This term encompasses both sensation and signification, feeling and meaning (as in the “sense” of a word) in its spectrum of referents. Sensation-signification is seen as forming a continuum, which is modulated by the sensory order.’ (Howes, 2022c, p. 3)

Paul Rodaway (Rodaway, 2018, p. 69) points to a similar intertwinement in his Sensory Geography: ’…perception involves the sense organs (including the body) and the mind, but it is also situated in and mediated by a geographical and cultural environment’. Perception includes both multiple sensations, mental processes such as remembrance, cultural behavior, and it happens in a geographical landscape, in the body, and by the body with its placement, and orientation (Rodaway, 2018).” (Frølund, 2023, 37)

“Hierarchic configuration of the senses

The cultural character and politics of sensation are leading to certain socially and culturally specific sensoria which holds certain hierarchic order of the senses, as Howes (Howes, 2006, p. 5) argues:

“Just as the model of intersensoriality does not necessarily imply a state of harmony, nor does it imply a state of equality, whether sensory or social. Indeed, the senses are typically ordered in hierarchies. In one society or social context sight will head the list of the senses, in another it may be hearing or touch. Such sensory rankings are always allied with social rankings and employed to order society.”

These cultural specific hierarchies of sensations have social consequences. Besides the tendency for emphasising some senses over other as the western cultural consideration of smell, touch and taste as lower senses and vision and hearing as higher senses traditionally associated with cognition (Howes & Classen, 2014); (Korsmeyer, 2002). The hierarchy of the senses has influenced the materiality of different cultures through both architecture and physical artifacts (Howes, 2006; Howes & Classen, 2014) and in the way art is perceived in western societies dominantly through seeing rather than touching, smelling, or tasting (Howes & Classen, 2014), or the ideas of aesthetic value (Howes & Classen, 2014); (Korsmeyer, 2002). According to Howes (Howes, 2006) such hierarchy and configuration of sensation must be understood with attention to the values attached to different senses, the sequencing of sensations, and how different senses are linked to different meanings. These three processes of hierarchisation could be considered concrete processes of how segmentations could occur through rhythms and sensation, by ordering through models of sensory sequencing or linking, through binary ordering of sensations, or as point of resonance.

The anchoring and forming of sensation by culture implies that there is a politics of sensation that affects both the relationship to other humans and the environment. This politics of sensation has social consequences in that it establishes positions of power, makes social sensory segmentations, and applies the hierarchy of the senses to hierarchies of social groups and class:

‘The social control of perceptibility — who is seen, who is heard, whose pain is recognized — plays an essential role in establishing positions of power within society. Such control is exercised both officially and unoffically, and determines not only who is perceived, but also how they are perceived.’ (Howes & Classen, 2014, p. 65).

With such linkage between sensations and relations of power, where what really is a plurality of sensations is being configured hierarchically, controlled or limited culturally and socially, there is certainly a question of justice and injustice of sensations. The ways sensations are ordered and happening is thus highly relevant for grasping how art works are segmenting or opening.” (Frølund, 2023, 38)

Reference: Frølund, M. (2023). Sensory segmentation around and with art monuments in rural landscapes: Towards a sensory heritage sensitive rural spatial justice. [Ph.D. thesis, SDU]. University of Southern Denmark. Faculty of Business and Social Sciences. https://doi.org/10.21996/2szz-kc78. Pp.83-88.

References in text:

Howes, D. (2022a). The misperception of the environment: A critical evaluation of the work of Tim Ingold and an alternative guide to the use of the senses in anthropological theory. Anthropological Theory, 0(0), 14634996211067307. https://doi.org/

Howes, D. (2022). The sensory studies manifesto: tracking the sensorial revolution in the arts and human sciences. University of Toronto Press.

Howes, D. (2006). Scent, Sound and Synaesthesia: Intersensoriality and Material Culture Theory. In T. Christopher, K. Webb, K. Susanne, R. Michael, & S. Patricia (Eds.), The Handbook of Material Culture (pp. 161-172). SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781848607972.n11

Howes, D., & Classen, C. (2014). Ways of sensing: Understanding the senses in society. Routledge.

Korsmeyer, C. (2002). Making sense of taste: food & philosophy. Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/j.ctt5hh0p6

Rodaway, P. (2018). Geography of the senses. In D. Howes (Ed.), Senses and sensation vol. 1 critical and primary sources: geography and antropology (pp. 63-80). Bloomsbury.