Sense: Abstract

Abstract

The study tests the discursive limits of current models of the human sensorium; outlines the mapping of the eye/ear pair onto the mind/body dichotomy and how this constructs a passive sensorium and entrenches anti-intellectual and anti-erotic stances; calls for an examination of the dialectical interplay between sensation and cogitation through a re-valuation of the role of abstraction in acts of reading and perception; argues that unchallenged sensory biases are at work in dyadic models of reproduction; examines ethno-scientific assumptions underlying theories of social and biological reproduction; probes deployment of sensory organizations in theory-making about models of generation; traces the consequences of sensory organizations for theory-making about models of interpretation; presents a typology of dichotomist versus dialectical epistemologies; stakes the claim that models and material practices stand in a dialectical relation to each other; posits, finally, that non-reductive functional approaches to narrative enhance the modelling of an interactive sensorium and open the way for non-trivial analysis of narratives coded in other than linguistic means.