Perception involves the dependence of the senses. Their union is then central to the ways in which we come to learn about, understand, and represent the world. Increased sensory engagement advocates that more attention be devoted to the significance of the interplay between senses, what is emphasized in our perception, what is left out, what is noticed as strange, what we become accustomed to, or what we relegate to the background.
Synesthesia, which describes an atypical sensory experience elicited by the experience of another sense—hearing a sound and experiencing an associated smell for instance—illustrates sensory co-dependence. Though synesthesia is generally considered a neurobiological anomaly, there are more subtle instances in which similar phenomena of the interplay between association, memory, and imagination among the senses are clear. These associations serve as a reminder that no sense operates in an isolated or independent way, that things are perceptible through all senses, and indeed, everything slips beyond the interpretation of any one sense. Instances of synesthesia reveal the ways in which our perception is enveloped involuntarily and how the interplay between our senses forms associations unbeknownst to our immediate awareness. In defying and temporarily dissolving the perceived boundaries between senses, synesthetic effects open perceptual experience to be “steered by other components;” sound, as Deleuze and Guattari propose, often plays a principal role in eliciting “superposed” perception (1980, 346).
Critical observations on the effects of any one faculty—the detriment of supposedly visual-centric organization relative to orality for instance—as Ingold points out, entrenches the individuation and separation of senses. This effectively subscribes to and “reproduc[es] a dichotomy” which, he contends, is itself “deeply embedded within a Western tradition” (2000, 249). Synesthesia, in belying these distinctions, forces our attention to the interplay and dependence between our senses. Our sensory unconscious prompts our imagination, enlivens our perception, anchors memories, and forms our understandings. Closer attention to them may therefore help in grasping and sharing an ethnographic sense of place.
Synesthesia also troubles clear distinctions between mind and body by revealing the ways in which our perception, learning, understanding—generally considered faculties “in the mind”—are anchored in our senses and guided by our unconscious in ways unbeknownst to us. Sensory attention proceeds with the conviction that it is valuable to break down the distance between sensations and intellect, and to permit more embodied engagement to inform ethnographic accounts. Ethnographers may try, as artists do, to draw on synesthetic effects to lend the excess which recedes from written representation and exceeds any possible impression from one sense but emerges instead from the interplay between them.
Works Cited
- Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Félix. (1980). A Thousand Plateaus. (B. Massumi, translation). University of Minnesota Press.
- Ingold, Tim. (2000). The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Routledge.