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[4] Ocularcentrism, and its inherited potential of adopting an objectifying gaze and drowning out other senses, is followed by physiological divisions of labour and the perceived superiority of the hands over feet. Visualism and the functions of hands to use, master, and manipulate each offer a kind of epistemic authority and often seem to share in a motivation for control that is denied to other senses. While an inter-sensory dependence is always active and necessary, both hands and sight become–in Johannes Fabian’s words–“synonymous with understanding” (1983, 106) and a kind of empirical precision. Walking, smelling, and tasting for instance, seem more dependent on other senses for confirmation and qualification, more open and subject with greater vulnerability to the object of perception.
[5] Anthropologist Tim Ingold wonders about the implications of sensory biases and how they shape our perception, assessments, and subsequent inhabitation of the environment. He draws a correlation between the mechanization of footwork and “modernity” and notes that “modernity” has increasingly insulated itself from the actual ground or tactile affairs, and that the push for civilization has resulted in the “withdrawal” of the intellect from other sensory spheres (2011). As he articulates, the hands correspond with reason, feet with nature, hands intelligence, feet instinct. Modernity invokes a degree of distance from the ground, remaining conceptually intact only as it is able to differentiate itself from nature, instinct, risk, and uncertainty. In the chapter ‘Culture on the Ground’ Ingold explores what walking might offer to restore a sense of touch, and to ground and balance us. What might it mean to think with our feet?
[1] Our worlds are necessarily drawn up through the associations of our various senses, as our perceptions are arranged by them. The dominant empiricist approach posits perception as a neutral purveyor for collecting and conveying “data” of the world “out-there” to the understandings “in-our-heads.” Historian of senses Constance Classen reminds us, however, that there has long been debate over the separation of intrinsic senses as well as their ‘rankings’ in perception. Classen explores the correlation between sense perception and culture. Sense hierarchies are, she contends, to an extent ordered by culture as they shape and are shaped by political and historical processes (1993, 5). As Fabian provokes, “[w]hat makes a reported sight more objective than a reported sound, smell or taste? Our bias for one and against the other is a matter of cultural choice rather than universal validity” (1983: 107–108).
[2] Visualism is generally the primary mode of perception, in part this is a result of neurobiological propensity towards sight, it is also, however, accentuated by political and cultural inclinations. It is not that sight in itself is problematic but rather that an over-reliance on it comes at the expense of other senses and neglects the ways in which all of our senses interact and depend on one another. The prioritization of sight—and subsequent blunting, numbing, or discrediting of its counterparts—yields particular analytical lenses and configurations of the world. Ingold importantly cautions against an assumed domineering characteristic of sight; he stresses that to see is not unequivocally to reduce, control, and appropriate representations. And indeed, along with other authors, he reminds that critiques of visualism alone reinforce perceived divides between senses.
barefeet. Image’s Source.
[3] Taking the consequences of sensory division to an extreme end, Marshall McLuhan contends that visualism has had detrimental cognitive effects, leading to objective, linear, analytic, and fragmented modes of thought that blunt and numb other forms of understanding (1964). The overextension of sight to McLuhan’s mind mitigates “humane involvement” and lends “the power to act without reacting,” (1964, 4) which alienates and de-personalizes interactions bringing about societal reorganization accordingly. Timothy Mitchel similarly interrogates the political implications of visualism, arguing that implicated in the act of viewing is a degree of power and authority, an ‘apparent realism’, a “rendering up of the world as a thing to be viewed,” and the capacity to see without being seen (2004). Mitchel scrutinizes the colonial European/Western gaze; through the instance of the ‘Exhibitionary Order’ he details the consequences of an over-reliance on a detached and unfeeling sight. These consequences are characterized by objectification—which interprets things as objects to be looked at rather than forces which affect our sensorium, the empirical authority of expressing facticity primarily through appearance, and the refusal to explore the contours, illusions, limits, and genesis of this sense. This imbalanced sensory order relegates other senses as subordinate and ancillary, neglecting qualities that elude visual expression as well as the ways in which sight relies on other senses.
[6] Exploring walking as a method partakes in the interdisciplinary “sensory turn”. This shift challenges the divisions of the sensorium in an effort to appreciate the interdependence of senses, their critical influence on interpretation, and forms of perception beyond sight. Focusing on other senses can strengthen our imaginations and help to appreciate experience as a manifestation of complex relations between senses and external stimuli. Walking enlivens our senses and demands an inter-sensory focus, this makes it an apt method to disrupt “physiological divisions of labour” (Ingold) and impressions of senses as isolated and functioning independently from one another. Instead, walking asks us to notice the ways in which our senses draw up our experience together, and how footfalls and tactile experiences enable and push us to think.
[7] Attending to a broader range of senses may offer new ethnographic insights and assessments. This flexibility is important to a cosmological imagination if indeed—as Classen argues—sense myopia is inadequate for apprehending other forms of perception, orders, and ways of inhabiting the world. Walking as a method, and subsequent reflections on that process, is conducive to these aims and an effective way to correct sensory biases and contend with their consequences.
WORKS CITED
- Classen, C. (1993). Worlds of sense: Exploring the senses in history and across cultures. Routledge.
- Ingold, T. (2011). Being Alive. Routledge.
- McLuhan, M. (1964) (2010 ed.). Understanding media: The extensions of man. Routledge.
- Mitchell, T. (2004). Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order. In Grasping the World. Routledge.