Conference report - From culture to biology (and back?): Towards a semiotics of the senses (original) (raw)

2016, Punctum. International journal of semiotics

Upon revisiting the origins of modern, instrumentalist and positivist conceptualizations of the sensorium, what becomes apparent is the fragility of the model of the five senses. Until the 18 th century, the processes shaping perception were imagined along more nuanced tonalities, engaging not only religious-metaphysical forces, but also sociocultural factors such as ethical and behavioral systems. The uses of the term to describe 'meaning, import and interpretation' (this makes sense), to denote the 'capacity for perception and appreciation' (sense of shame, sense of humor), to refer to a physiological process (we sense the cold), to the result of intuition (I sense danger), or to the stimulation of desire (what a sensual fragrance), all point to different ordering systems that have developed in their own right. And if the etymology of this Latin root takes us down enlightening analytical paths, the linguistic and philosophical genealogies of the Greek term αἴσθησις (aesthesis) are even more adventurous. Despite the richness of modern accounts of the world of the senses from Karl Marx to Georg Simmel, and the structuralist and post-structuralist efforts to reunite the senses and conceptualize the full sensorium as the human perceptual apparatus from Levi-Strauss (1969) to sound studies (Shafer 1973; Corbin 1994; Thibaud 2011), it is not until the 1980s that the humanities overcame their reluctance to tackle the senses and give rise to what has been called the sensory turn (Howes 2006). The senses seem to have recast the raw material of phenomenological philosophical and psychological discourse (Gibson 1966; Stoller 1997). They lie at the heart of the inquiry on the nature of consciousness, point to an 'ecology of perception' (Sonesson 2005), and force us to reconceptualize memory and its relationships to truth, reality, embodiment, and agency (Merleau-Ponty 1948). Numerous studies in anthropology, geography, art and archaeology-e.g. the studies by Nadia Seremetakis (1996) and Yannis Hamilakis