Sensory Studies at 20: A State-of-the-Art Review

[00:00:00]ahead. So this is an international multi- and interensory and intergenerational conference and I really want to emphasize that there are lots of established sensory studies scholars here. Lots of stars but there are also those of you whom we hail as next generation sensory studies scholars. the MA students, the PhD students, the postocs, you are the rising stars and may you burn bright and never burn out. But let me warn you, okay, there's a real risk of burnout in this line of business, okay? Sensory overload happens to the best of us all the time. So, we've got to guard against it. And actually, we have a cure uh for sensory overload. Um, it's going to be happening tonight at the Incipid Banquet, okay? So, just hang on and we will prepare you for what's coming, okay? And you won't experience sensory overload. I can assure you. Um, well, look, let's get started um with what we're actually supposed to be discussing. What I'd like to do um is sort of give you um a couple of definitions so that we orient ourselves and then move into the body of of the talk. Um some definitions. Okay. Um the sensorium.

[00:01:25]Okay. Let's not talk about the five senses. Okay. It's grossly misleading that notion. Let's follow Walter Ang who wrote defined the sensorium as the entire sensory apparatus as an operational complex. Differences in culture he suggest can be thought of as differences in the sensorium. The organization of which is partly determined by culture while at the same time it makes culture. So this is the interface between culture and biology uh between uh so many things that is the focus of our inquiry our inquiry into the sensorium. How do you study the sensorium? Well u you know the best sort of suggestion the best framework from within anthropology is a definition advanced by France Laontin in the life of the senses. The experience of ethnographic fieldwork is an experience of sharing in the sensible.

[00:02:29]We observe, we listen, we speak with others, we partake of their cuisine, we try to feel along with them what they experience and together with them make sense of that experience. So there you have um you know sort of uh a definition of the sensorium which is the object of study and the way in which to to approach it. Um and I really find uh this a bit difficult. There we go. Um next. Okay. Uh I'd like to talk about disciplining the senses. the way in which a series of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities converged on the sensorium beginning right around 1990. So you have in that time you know the emergence of an anthropology of the senses, a history of the senses, a sociology of the senses and a geography of the senses. Each of those sort of represented an incursion on psychology because for the longest while psychology had the last word. Okay. The professionals when it comes to studying the senses and perception were the psychologists. Now, you know, psychologists think they can study the senses in laboratories and they think they can make representative claims about how human perception works when the subjects that they use as research subjects are all weird. They are all western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic subjects. That's the only people psychologists draw on because they're cheap. Okay? students are cheap.

[00:04:12]Uh you can get them to run all kinds of experiments like the mice that they otherwise used. Um and psychologists presume to tell us things uh about the senses based on this very small and unrepresentative sample and all of the assumptions that they bring with them as you know bourgeoa jantium. So what we do in anthropology is we seek to get out of the laboratory. Okay. want to liberate the senses from the laboratory and you know investigate them in um everyday life and these are a couple of milestones I'm not going to go into them in depth but this is you know sort of what you see happening in anthropology u around the sensory turn first of all you have to go back to um the 1970s a very famous book by Clifford Gears called the interpretation of cultures which sort of suggests an interpretive paradigm and uh Gears said the culture of a people is an ensemble of texts which the anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong. Okay. So you know anthropology is a process of reading culture. Then a decade later you have a very influential book being published called writing culture. Every graduate student in anthropology has been through it. Um, and it's about the poetics and politics of ethnography, and it questions a lot of the assumptions that undergurtded Gears's perspective. But look at the strange thing that's going on on the cover of this book. You have Steven Tyler in the field. Now, actually, his posture is not correct because remember with Gerts, the anthropologist reads over the shoulders of the people. Well, no. Here tyler has got his back turned to them and they're obviously quite bored and they're looking over his shoulder. Okay. So, basically what had happened is that the model of the text, the model of reading culture and then writing culture had resulted in anthropology imploding. It had gotten swallowed up by the model of the text, cut off from the very people um that it was concerned formerly with studying.

[00:06:24]Along comes Paul Stler who writes the taste of ethnographic things in 1989. Uh and that's a very different uh approach.

[00:06:34]Uh sort of Stler you know puts the senses into anthropology and is not so concerned with interpretation really trying to grapple with sensation. And so too with the publication in 2023 of the Routlet International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography, a massive tome which really shows you how sensory ethnography has come of age. Look at history. Okay, how has the sensory turn unfolded in history?

[00:07:07]This will be a familiar figure to many of you. It's Marshall McLuhan and he has a media map of history which starts with oral cultures where the ear is dominant goes through the invention of the phonetic alphabet. So the eye is substituted for the ear. There's a greater intensification with the printing press and movable repeatable type and then you have the invention of the telegraph and that actually sort of brings uh hearing and and and um touch back in. Now this is a very very powerful framework and I just have to say that you know it was McLuhan who got me hooked on the senses. I went to a a talk he gave at Trinity College in 1979 where he was setting out the laws of media that you see here and it absolutely captivated my attention. Most importantly it saved me from Merlo Ponti. Okay. because all of the people that I was going through my program with were reading the phenomenology of perception in preparation for their fieldwork. Okay? And that is the worst imaginable preparation because it, you know, for a phenomenologist it's all about you, right? It's all about me.

[00:08:21]Sorry, it's not about you. It's about me. Okay? And Marlo Ponty furthermore has the idea of a unity of the senses.

[00:08:28]Um, what McLuhan taught us is about the caliroscopic sensorium, the clash of the senses. And we should be paying just as much attention to the clash of the senses as to their unison. But if you read Marilo Ponty, you're not going to get any of that. You see, so I am so thankful to Marshall McLuhan for shielding me from the uh unfortunate influence of Melo Ponty. In terms of history, one very sort of uh important author is Constance Classen. Um and her methodology for doing the cultural history of um the senses um is one that involves sensing between the lines.

[00:09:12]Okay, not reading between the lines but sensing between the lines. And in the example of her book Inca cosmology and the human body um you know she actually senses between the lines of the Spanish chronicles um which were laced with racist stereotypes to reconstruct the sensory order of the Inca Empire. Um, in two chapters in this book, Empire of the Senses, one called McLuhan in the rainforest, the sensory orders of order, oral cultures. Um, she gives us an essential corrective to McLuhan. He lumped all oral cultures together. But in fact, there are as many differences to the orchestration of the senses between oral cultures as there are between oral cultures and literate cultures. Okay, there is a tremendous diversity using sensory ethnography. You can begin to tap into those. Her other chapter in Empire of the Senses was called the witch's senses, sensory ideologies and transgressive femininities from the Renaissance to modernity. um sort of a wonderful exploration of you know the witch and how the witch's senses know fascinated and perturbed uh men especially uh during this period and all of the ways in women in which women transgressed the bounds that were dictated by men. Cultural history of the census is six volumes. Each volume has 10 chapters. That means she's the general general editor of that and uh 60 scholars you had to marshall to pull off um an investigation of this nature. I strongly recommend that you read the books in the cultural history of the census in order to actually um know where you are coming from when you do a study in history or when you do a study in anthropology. Don't read the phenomenology of perception. It won't help you. But if you actually acquire a historical sense, then you'll be able to pick on up on things that you wouldn't have perceived otherwise. Um now, um the next thing uh is another way of dividing the sensorium. I've talked a little bit about how all these different disciplines, you know, converge on uh the sensorium and sort of steal the thunder and also territory from psychology. Um but another way of dividing the sensorium is in terms of these fields these interdicciplinary fields which will be very familiar to you. Visual culture, auditory culture or sound studies, smell culture, taste cultures and so on. Um and so you know here all of these different divisions of the sensorium by sense but approach from a multid-disciplinary angle instead of a a unidisiplinary one come under the umbrella term of sensory studies. And this is a term coined by Michael Bull and the rest of us in 2006. Um, and I want to actually sort of now get to talking about um that journal that Michael and I are associated with. Um in what follows I want to offer an insider account of the genesis of this journal and an overview of the development of the interdisciplinary field of sensory studies from 2006 to 2026. Okay. So actually this is a first draft of an article that we will be publishing in the f in the first issue of the volume next year 2026.

[00:12:56]Um I was the origin I I was the editor of the um sensory formation series from Berg and Michael was the co-editor of the first volume in that series a book called the auditory culture reader that came out in 2003 and it was our publisher the visionary Katherine Earl um who suggested that we start a journal. So, Michael called on Paul Gilroy and I called on Doug Khan to join us. Um, and they agreed. Um, that's Paul Gilroy, the author of Black Atlantic and Postcolonial Melancholia. Um, uh, Paul Gilroy. Um, I remember sitting uh in this restaurant booth right next to Paul Gilroy as we talked about how we might imagine this journal. It was a tremendously inspiring experience. Um, who is Michael Bull? Well, um, before enrolling for a PhD in sociology at Goldsmith, um, he organized jazz festivals and weekend concerts in and around Covenant Garden for about six years. Very cool. Very, very cool. Um, he rocketed to fame um, on account of his studies of the Walkman and the iPod.

[00:14:11]Indeed, all media would converge on Michael for commentary. he became the authority known as Dr. iPod um as a result of bringing uh this um you know cultural studies informed approach to the analysis of this device. He is a prolific scholar uh extraordinary the number of books that he has edited uh and that he is written writing um but he is not with us tonight and I just want to explain why. Um earlier this year he decided to retire and wrapping things up when you are as productive a scholar as he has been is very difficult and timeconsuming. Um, so when he bowed out of being here, he wrote to me saying, "I never liked the word retiring. I'm going to try and speed up." Um, and I'm sure he will because he's just that kind of person, but anyway, he has to wind down all of these, you know, associations that he's got going. Secondly, his book is way overdue. Um, sonic experience of World War I, fragments, traces, variation. Bloomber Bloomsbury know who've got him under contract are asking when is this manuscript going to arrive so he had to dedicate his attention to that and also because he's the managing editor of of the census and society we alternate um you know he has to deal with the crisis of one of the special issues that was supposed to be even at the publisher on April 15th you know not being done yet and you know working with editors who are irresponsible like that is really really difficult. So that takes time. Now this act this special issue is actually edited by um me uh and and Abu Farman. Okay. And you know Abu will be here um but we shouldn't be Michael should be here. We should be at our desks wrapping up the issue. But that's you know Michael a wonderful sacrifice. He promised he would come to Concordia in the coming year. So we let him off the hook for this. I'm just sorry he couldn't be here uh to be with you. Senses and society. Okay. Where does that come from? Well, obviously playing off body and society. A very wellestablished journal, a very wellrespected journal. So, we want to draw a little bit of its draw, you know, to ourselves. But what were we going to call this um this area that we were developing? Okay. What how are we going to define our method? Sensography?

[00:16:48]No. Okay. Um and uh we experimented with a number of different expressions until we came up with sensory studies. Okay.

[00:16:58]Sensory studies, cultural studies. It has a distinct resonance. And we thought, okay, this is going to work.

[00:17:05]But actually, we didn't come up with it.

[00:17:09]We stole it. Um we stole it from um you know there was already in existence a journal of sensory studies at that time and it was run by the society of sensory professionals. What is a sensory professional? Do any of you can say yourself to be a sensory professional?

[00:17:27]Well, they used to be called organicians and that's because they are concerned with the senses of smell and taste and they're all those chemists in white coats in laboratories who are, you know, sort of seeking to analyze the composition of foods and design them so we will like them. Um, and in that regard, you know, we took the name from them. We took it and you're allowed to do that, okay? With a book, book covers, you know, book titles, that's it's allowed. Um, not many people do, but you're allowed. There's nothing wrong with that. I want to emphasize, okay, I don't have a guilty conscience about doing this. In fact, I kind of chuckle every once in a while when I think if they Google sensory studies, these chemists, okay, what do they come up with? They come up with all of our stuff, okay? They have to go pages and pages down until they get to what they think of as being sensory studies. So I laugh to myself until until this happened 10 days ago. We were invaded, okay, by our our our like like our website. If you went on it, you wouldn't see our website. You saw sensorystudies.org, okay? And this is neuroscientists and occupational therapists with an interest in autism who also have a very deep interest in getting sensory studies.org for themselves. Okay. So they had gone in they had uh you know sort of stolen this because actually in cyberspace it's not the same. In cyerspace you own a domain name. There had been problems with the credit card, but we got it back thanks to Jonathan who's here. Within 3 hours, he had sorted this and we were back. Okay, but imagine you would not have been able to find the website that you had been using on for all the information about this um this conference during that brief moment when it was occupied. Okay, occupied by this alien force of neuroscientists and occupational therapists. Um now um uh I want to emphasize that uh well maybe maybe I can what I can do is very briefly um you know give you a a concrete example of just how it is uh that sensory studies approaches as as in ethnography differs um from the sensory science approach. Um, but actually, you know what? Um, looking at the time, um, I I Yes, I think I can. I'm I'm going to do this. I'm going to go for it. Okay.

[00:20:05]This is what sensory professionals do.

[00:20:08]Okay. Um, this is a book called Sensory Evaluation um, techniques. Um, it's about the methods of sensory science.

[00:20:15]And here you get an inside view of um, a a sensory evaluation laboratory. As you can see, there are all these cubicles.

[00:20:25]And as you can see, the panelists or the people who are being the research subjects um are assigned to these cubicles. Um they are isolated from each other and in fact they're not supposed to say a thing. Okay? Because the the people who are conducting this research don't want any interference. Okay? So they mustn't talk to each other. They mustn't go or anything like that because that might throw somebody else off.

[00:20:49]Meanwhile, they have to wear ear defenders sometimes, nose clips at others, blindfolds, because they want to analyze each of the sensory properties of a product, one sensation at a time.

[00:21:02]And then they're all tabulated and a statistical profile of the ideal product is generated. Most importantly, according to the methodology of the sensory scientists, is that you have to be spontaneous. Okay, they want you to be the first thing that pops into your mind. Okay, and and you record that judgment. Okay, so you've got people standing over you. Be spontaneous. I'm trying. I'm trying. Be spontaneous. And and you can imagine the tension. I have a lot of admire admiration for the people that subject themselves to this kind of torture um in the interests of science. Okay, in the interest of arriving at a portrait of these materials. Now you have discrimination tests, you have hydonic tests and so forth that are used by these sensory scientists. Okay, you don't have a semantic test. I want to come back to that in just a moment. Okay, so um you know this is how we do um our research. Okay, uh with a friend of mine, Jean Sebastian Maku, who was an anthropologist. He studied under Danny Miller um at UCL in the material culture program and he was hired by the department of marketing at the hotel.

[00:22:16]Um and uh uh he and I uh had some contracts for a while. This is a long time ago 1997 with a very prominent uh Montreal advertising firm. Okay. We were hiring ourselves out as anthropologists.

[00:22:30]And uh this firm had the Corona account and interesting interesting beer. Only 17% of women drink beer at least once a week compared to 53% of men. So there's a real disparity there. But 38% of women drink Corona compared to 62% of men. And in December 2024, which is quite recent, Labat Brewery announced that its five top performing beers were Corona, Budweiser, Medel, and Michel. Okay. So, a lot of Corona's success or share of the market is due to the disproportionate number of women who drink it and also to the fact that it's the number one selling import beer in Quebec. So why is it so popular and why is it so appealing to women? Because this is the secret of its success. So you know were Jean Sebastian and myself u you know going to go into one of these labs okay and do our studies that way?

[00:23:36]No way. Okay we went on a pub crawl okay and I I highly commend uh you know the pub crawl as a way of doing ethnographic research. um you know what we were in search of was the natives point of view as anthropologists put it um and what we did was we focused on the qualia um the sensory properties of the product but we did so ethnographically instead of I know they they probably call it scientifically I don't believe it um and so you know what was it about corona okay uh compared to say this Mson Canadian um what was it about the sensory qualities of these products s that differentiated them and accounted for Corona's success. Well, first of all, we had one hypothesis. Was it because Quebecers first encountered Corona when they were on vacation in Mexico and wanted to put some Mexican sunshine in their lives when back in Montreal that they went for it? But that didn't pan out. Was it because of the ritual? As you know, you know, Corona comes with a little twist of lime. And so, you don't just drink it. There's always a ritual involved. We thought that was pretty cool and pretty important and as anthropologists we're into ritual. But what we found actually in order to sort of understand what's been called the gender pint gap, you know, was that what was most informative, you know, was actually looking at the way in which the the beers were perceived. Now, Molson Canadian, okay, man's beer, a man's beer. And we found that when men who drink Molson can Canadian talk about it, they would say it's very filling and pack their bellies. This is known as the Molson muscle. Okay. In in uh uh you know, so it was the full quality, the fullbodied quality. And actually, you know, the rich golden color of Molson Canadian, you know, amplified that.

[00:25:30]Compare, you know, Corona. Um, and you know, the interesting thing about Corona, it's a tall slim bottle instead of a, you know, a dark stubby one. Um, and it's the color of sunshine, not a golden kind of color. And when women talked about it, who drank it, they would say, you know, that they found it very fine. And they would go like this.

[00:25:52]They wouldn't pat their bellies. They would go like this. So, it was the finesse. It was the finess of the experience of Corona. And they considered it to be a light beer. Now, it's not a light beer. It has higher alcohol content than Guinness. So, anybody who is drinking it thinking it's a light beer is going to get hammered without realizing why. Um, and so, you know what was interesting is that this was consumer added value. It was the interpretation that people were putting on this beer, seeing it as light, okay, that actually was accounting for its popularity. And you're never going to get at that in one of those sensory evaluation labs. I rest my case. Um, now, um, I wanted to get into this, the modern family, um, and how you can see the senses through a photograph using this idea of sensing between the lines, but we don't have time. Let me comment briefly on this. I'm just trying to give you different models by which you can sort of um imagine uh this idea of the sensory model. Uh and here it's a very interesting one. It's that of um you know um first of all Wilder Penfield's uh wonderful experiments and Mark Patterson has a wonderful book how he became sensory mo motor in which he talks about you know what Penfield was on about this neurosurgeon here in Montreal uh who would open the skulls of uh these epilepsy patients and brush them and find out in that way the brain's map of the body um and they were conscious And they would tell when he touched them here or there, you know, different experiences that they had.

[00:27:29]Absolutely fascinating. And in this way, um, you know, he arrived at this understanding of how the body is mapped on the brain. And you can see that, you know, the the cortical magnification is different from the anatomical proportions. You have both a t a 2D and a 3D image here. see how big the mouth is, how big the hands are because of all the sensors uh that go to the brain from those areas. Now, um now the star-nosed mole um is another famous example of this. Here you have a number of different moles and the star-nosed mole, which you see at the bottom, not a very attractive uh creature, admittedly, okay, is really quite interesting because moles of course generally have small eyes and a tiny optic nerve. Um and they are functionally blind essentially. Um but they have 25,000 receptors in these touch organs, these wriggly fingers um that you know protrude from their nasal area. Um and the the star-nosed mole can actually decide whether something is edible or not in 8 milliseconds, which is faster than any other um you know animal in effect. And what's interesting is that like the sacatic movement of the eyes, that's what these feelers are doing. Um, and so there's an extraordinary representation of touch um in the case of the um star-nosed mole. And you know, again, the idea here is that well maybe we can use this as a model to think of different cultures as you know, paying attention in different proportions um to uh different senses. Uh maybe we can use this as a way of thinking. It's a bit too mechanistic a way of thinking but that was part of what inspired us um you know to begin with. Um you know one of the things was that uh at the last uncommon senses uh we used sensory ecology in the title and we got all these applications from biologists and initially we were going to write to them and say this is not your kind of conference okay this is a cultural studies conference you know what do you want to come to us for but we didn't they came okay and u let me tell you colorful jumping spiders are the most amazing thing. Um, I had long been a cultural constructionist. Okay? I was only concerned with a cultural account of the senses. I'm not going to become a biologist, but I was absolutely fascinated by what these, you know, researchers in sensory ecology were understanding, and it's completely expanded my mind and a number of anthropologists minds. Uh, the idea of a multiecies um, anthropology that comes out of that to begin to map these other ways of sensing. Okay, I'm going to skip this and this. I'll come back to it later.

[00:30:21]Uh, but this is the way to do sensory ethnography. This painting by Remedio Faroh. I'd like to talk instead um about the development of this interdisciplinary field of sensory studies since 2006. It really is quite extraordinary how sensory studies has taken off during this period. Um, you know, you have the sensory formations book series from from Berg, which was sold to Bloomsbury, which was sold to Routidge, but it's okay. We're doing great at Routout. It was a good move.

[00:30:54]You have the sensory studies series, which is offered now, first of all, by Bloomsbury, but now is based with Routoutledge. You have Mark Smith's um uh series, studies and sensory history at University of Illinois Press, but that has now moved and become perspectives on sensory history. You have Cambridge University Press elements in history to emotions um and the senses. You have the Westminster law and senses series. You have universal and you have a another uh sort of series that's just come on um environment senses and emotions. So there's been this extraordinary expansion um and uh you know development of sensory studies that's reflected in all these different book series and there are more these are just the ones I'm going to focus on there are also uh you know an increasing number of journals the senses and society around since 2006 um one of its latest special issues is senses and spaces of modern healthcare uh its next issue if it ever gets finished uh is called multiensory ethnography and sinthetics by Abu Farman and myself. Um you have multimodality in society which uh is uh directed by Carrie Jwitt um at the knowledge lab at University College London. It has had um you know multimodality and museums was one special issue. Another one was race and multimodality edited uh by Sachi Sakimoto and and Chris Brown. Sachi is with us. Um there is sensate um a journal for experiments in critical media practice that's out of the sensory ethnography lab basically at Harvard.

[00:32:40]There's alabastron which just came on institute for art and no faction is behind it. There's ambiences uh an international journal of um sensory environment architecture and urban space and you know ambiances actually it grew out of cres which was a a research group concerned with sound and listening at the university of granob but it gradually morphed into this study of sensory environments and you have the journal of sensory studies actually no it doesn't belong there okay it doesn't belong there um it's not in the domain that we are calling sensory studies. You have all these research centers and labs as well which really show you just how international um this uh you know is um you have the group at lege the Amsterdam center uh for cross-disciplinary emotion a group at Mardell plata uh you have the uh senses and society thematic group of the international sociological association you have the senses and sensations research group and the people from Bristol are here in force as well. Um you have the multiensory studio at the University of Calgary and Kathleen Sitter who directs that studio is also here and you have the embodied design research laboratory at UC Berkeley um and it's very interesting. It consists of mathematics um and they have um a reading group. It meets every Tuesday afternoon called the embodied underground. very Californian. Okay, velvet underground, embodied underground. Absolutely fascinating to mix uh with these people in mathematics who are looking at rendering mathematics sensible um and all of the improvements, excuse me, in terms of um you know what uh elementary school students can achieve with that. Um this is uh the sensory studies website, the one that we got back. cooking. We almost lost it, but we got it back. Um, great place to go to find out about events of note and uh, books of note. And let me draw your attention to the research directory.

[00:34:56]There are 700 entries in that directory.

[00:35:01]And you're going to be receiving an email inviting you to consider submitting an entry for the directory.

[00:35:08]It's addressed, you know, both to established scholars and to next generation scholars. Um, and I strongly encourage you if you find that actually, you know, your passion for sensory studies, uh, you know, grows as a result of the exposure to all the other people that you'll meet here to consider, uh, submitting an entry. Okay, we're at 700 now and it just keeps growing. We're not we don't charge fees, okay? And we're not an association. We're just a network. Um, and that's much more flexible, much more interesting than becoming the American Anthropological Association or or whatever. Um, you know, uh, the senses in society. I'm not going to go over our objectives. You can read those in the in the opening page.

[00:35:52]Um, but what I am going to do, um, is, you know, sort of address that question.

[00:35:58]Actually, I had a whole series of slides. No, no, no, no, not there yet.

[00:36:02]Um, yeah. Okay. I lost all of my slides on um the most cited article, the most read article and and so on. It's deeply distressing um because uh uh okay but I actually I can reconstruct it from my notes. Okay. So so you know one thing that would be interesting to do is that journals are very concerned to gather statistics about themselves. Okay. And so um they have uh you know um the ratings for a journal and this kind of thing very prominently on their website.

[00:36:36]Um and so uh and they also have you know most read articles of all time. So what know first place goes to introduction to sensory mosiology.

[00:36:47]And who is that by? It's by me. Okay.

[00:36:50]And that's not surprising. It's my journal, right? Not surprising at all that I would have the most read article.

[00:36:58]Uh but actually it's not just mine, but it just points to how, you know, that special issue on sensory musiology really struck a chord. It's been amazing uh the response to it. Um the next most readthesia transformation and synthesis a multiensory pedagogy of the image by Sylvia Cassini who's at the University of Abster Aberdine. very interesting article, you know, bringing out this idea of synthesia, which is so captive of many imaginations these days. Next at number three is engaging the senses in ethnographic practice. And that's by Sarah Pink. Um, and I bet you you all know Sarah Pink. She is uh an extraordinary force within the field of sensory studies. She edited she wrote a book ages ago called Doing Sensory Ethnography. Now most cited articles of all time. Okay. Re interestingly at the top of the list there is the senses in language and culture. A book by uh these linguists. Okay. Who took a very unusual approach to the study of language by looking at how the senses are represented not just color vocabularies but in a far richer kind of way. Um and uh that's Aifa Majid who's in um uh the experimental psychology department at Oxford and also Steven Levenson.

[00:38:23]Next comes introducing sensory studies and this is the article that Michael and I and Paul and Doug wrote back in 2006.

[00:38:32]Um it launched the sensorial revolution as it were. Then comes the sensory fabric of urban ambiences and that article is by Jean Paul Tibo of formerly of the University of Gob. He's he's retired now and he founded um the international um ambiences network.

[00:38:53]Okay. A very important organizer of that whole field known as ambiences. Um, next, sound studies meets deaf studies by Michelle Freriedner and Stefan Helmrich. Now, that is an unlikely pairing, sound studies and deaf studies.

[00:39:12]And for that very re reason, it is tremendously revealing, a tremendously important article, a caliroscopic article. McLuhan would have loved it.

[00:39:22]Uh, really, really interesting for the things it opens up. Um, now at number five, um, there is the article Rethinking the Soundsscape by Ari Kelman. And I wish it weren't there. I wish it were not in fifth place. I was the managing editor at the time Ari submitted it. And I had to hold my nose and block my ears the whole time it was going through the review process. Ari dared to criticize R. Marie Schaefer. Can you believe it?

[00:39:54]Okay. our Marie Schaefer who gave us the idea of the soundsscape, who gave us acoustic ecology, Ari had the audacity to say we need to rethink this concept.

[00:40:06]Okay, so I wouldn't have published it, but I bowed to the peer reviewers. Um, and it got in and now it's at number five. Okay, I feel that I betrayed our Murray Schaefer. He was here one year.

[00:40:20]Um he he his end of year project involved these students from theater and music and dance all composing a theater of the senses. It was an extraordinary night uh when we went to a place called the Parisian factory and took in the theater of the senses that he proposed.

[00:40:40]Um so I felt that I had betrayed him but again you have to bow to peer review.

[00:40:45]But let me just say something about peer review. Um, the biggest hassle writing or rather editing a journal is finding peer reviewers and then actually getting them to hand in their peer reviews. You would not imagine how much of a hassle it is. And you know what? We're thinking of going over to AI. Okay, we'll just give the whole process of evaluating uh articles to AI. Okay, if you people are not going to do it, if you Shannons are not going to do it, then the only recourse that we have now horrified by that idea. But I just want to say if you ever get an invitation to review an article for census and society, just do it. Okay, my it's over for us humans.

[00:41:34]Okay, the all the articles can be written by AI and they can be reviewed by by AI and we'll just stand idly in the background. Okay, those are the stakes. When you get an invitation to peer review, remember you're one of the last, you know, human beings out there, okay, who's still doing that because most human beings are not bothering.

[00:41:52]Most of your colleagues are not bothering. But I shouldn't I shouldn't complain. Um now, um I have gone through a great many things. One of the things that we promised was that there would be something for um each of the senses.

[00:42:10]And you know has the journal delivered on that? It's a very interesting question and actually I'm not going to go through and and do an an analysis of all the articles in the journal. I just want to look at how the senses are represented here now. Okay? And what you find you know you see the standard hierarchy site hearing smell taste touch on one side and then you've got the actual number of sessions on each of these. Look at that touch reigns supreme. Okay, the the conventional order of the senses has been overturned by you people. Okay, you revolutionaries, you're you're sort of you've turned the hierarchy upside down and there are more sessions on touch uh than any other sense. There's also a very interesting session at Innovot exploring haptics that is on tomorrow evening which you should think about maybe going to. You know, smell comes next. Smell is very well represented at this conference. And next comes hearing.

[00:43:09]Um and then sight, but only if you include people who are studying blindness. Um you have Jilly Hammer, you have John Lee Clark. Uh and their work on blindness is extraordinary and will completely transform your understanding of sight. And then taste. Okay, taste comes in at the bottom. Um but there are also all these emergent areas okay you know actually most of the sessions are multi or insens interensorial so I've given a kind of infinity loop for that okay most of you you know are are not abiding by the bounds of sense okay the five sense sensorium you're looking at all these crossovers the insensible and intangible interestingly there are five panels session on uh animal and plant sens sensing, we have sessions on that. Intimate and remote sensing, we have sessions on that. And we have queering um the senses. I'm very proud of that. Uh and it's Mark Lipton. I don't know if Mark is here yet. He might not be arriving till tomorrow. He has been at every uncommon senses there is.

[00:44:19]And we're at number five now. He deserves a medal. Okay. and his enthusiasm um and his efforts to queer the senses uh deserve um you know recognition. Um okay, I have a bunch more things that I want to say that I need to say. I want to talk about uh you know the experiment in dining um that we are going to be um enjoying tonight. I also want to give you a bit more sensory history of Quebec. And so I have those things on my agenda, but I'm going to stop right now and open the floor for questions. Any questions that you might have about um this uh sort of tracing of the history um of this notion of sensory studies and the history of you know a movement that has gone in this very interesting way. I'm going to ask you to come to the microphone if you would.

[00:45:14]Okay. So, sorry because we have people online.

[00:45:21]Okay. Yes, all the people online. So, please uh you know if you if you would come to the microphones that would be great. Okay. Please.

[00:45:36]Um thank you.

[00:45:38]I would like to know if when you see your work exposed, do you feel like traveling time to the moment you did it?

[00:45:49]Yeah. Like going back in the moment that you draw, you painted that. Well, I thought you talking about my experience with David. Um, we're two, we're double Davids and we're in this infinite spiral loop of time and place. We keep intersecting. I try to get away.

[00:46:06]gravitational pull pull this together again. I don't know if that answers your question. Well, I wasn't expecting that answer for sure. Thank you. Um, you know what I can say about David's paintings.

[00:46:18]Um, they have an extraordinary force as a result of the juxtop positions they stage. Uh, and you know, um, they are called, uh, matei still lives. uh and their still lives in a way that you know goes way beyond those Dutch still lives which are called Natio uh you know that's the French translation uh of still life uh David's still lives are living in very interesting ways very profound know one of David's paintings is in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts uh but this touring exhibition um is especially stunning in terms of the way it's going to make you know your understanding of the world be subject to all kinds of collisions.

[00:47:07]Any other questions?

[00:47:12]Um no I can I can I can answer my ask my own question. Okay. Well has it been easy? Okay. as it you know this steady march forward of sensory studies that you've described you know one one step after another this wonderful success story has it been you know a a highway no okay um and there have been numerous setbacks along the way very serious one could have been when we got raided okay by sensorystudies.org or when those neuroscientists, those nasty neuroscientists uh invaded our space.

[00:47:50]Okay. But actually there have been other um other confrontations as well. And I think especially to, you know, uh, the fact that back in in 2000, Tim Engold, who's probably the most prominent anthropologist out there right now, Tim Ingold, uh, in a book called The Perception of the Environment, took the trouble to trash a book that I had edited 10 years earlier called the varieties of sensory experience. Okay? He just cut it to pieces. And most people only ever read Tim Ingold. So they don't read what I was writing. They don't realize that, you know, he's created a straw man here.

[00:48:31]Uh and then put it up. Uh and that's, you know, easy for him to do. So actually, you know, a lot of people think of Tim Engold as being one of the foremost theorists of the census. Uh which is just not true. Okay, just not true. Um and uh you know there are all kinds of reasons for that but one of the things that I found interesting recently was that um I was writing a book called the sensory studies manifesto. Uh and uh I knew that you know what I wanted to say was the opposite of everything that Tim Ingold said. And so I wrote an article on the side which I entitled the misperception of the environment. Uh in which I showed all the ways in which ingold was wrong. Now the sensory studies manifesto is a very positive book. There's not a single critical word in it. It's just trying to articulate you know what I consider us all to be engaged in. The misperception of the environment is very combative. But I I want to emphasize that you know you might think that you know Tim Ingold and I are sworn enemies but the last time he was in Montreal uh he was at he at the invitation of my my colleagues at McGill. It was October. And so he and Anna and this a scholar who was visiting from Finland, we went up Mount Royal and I had brought along some some coffee and some quasonants. I mean, you know, Engold is an activity theorist. I couldn't just take him to a cafe. He can't sit. I mean, he's got to be on the move all the time. We had a wonderful conversation uh and avoided many of the topics that divide us. Uh so we get along very well, not very well.

[00:50:09]But when we came down Prime Mountain, you know, our paths parted, uh, and we've been at loggerheads ever since.

[00:50:15]So, um, I think David Lee Clark told me one time, you can judge a person by the quality of their enemies, not by their friends, by their enemies. And so, um, I don't know if this is a good reflection on me or a bad. Um, and I know that, you know, my students say, "Don't mention Engold to him." He starts off. Okay. Uh, but anyway, um, I just had to put that out there as well. world with that critique put the anthropology of the senses back 20 years. We have been slowly climbing out of that hole. Okay.

[00:50:48]And we're getting there. I'm very pleased with our progress, but it's taken a lot of effort. Okay. So, yes, some steps forward and then you get thrown back. Um, okay. If there are no more questions, let me sort of go on because I've still got um a fair bit of material um that I need to go through.

[00:51:09]Um and um uh that has to do um with um Oh, yeah. Um well, with what we're going to try and do at the banquet tonight. It's not really a banquet. It's a cocktail. Okay. It's it's not a banquet. we shouldn't have used that word. Um but uh I want to um explore uh you know what our objectives are there because I as I said you know this is uh an uncommon senses conference okay so um you know what we have tried to do is theme all of the experiences all of the experiences okay we're not just going to let this be an audiovisisual kind of experience so tonight um you know we themed it this play. Okay.

[00:52:01]Tonight uh at the incipid banquet, we are going to have Wonderbread for you and some very anemic margarine. Okay. In addition to that, we will have premium plus soda crackers, unsalted. We will have popcorn, corn popcorn. It will be unsalted and unbuttered. And we will have celery. lots and lots of celery.

[00:52:29]Now, celery, it takes more energy to chew a stick of celery, okay, than you get from eating it. Okay? So, it's a negative proposition, I'm told. Um, we only made two concessions, two exceptions to eating white tonight. Blue spaghetti. It was so popular last time that we decided we had to bring it back.

[00:52:51]And wasabi peas. Uh that the thing about the wasabi piece is that you have to pick them up with chopsticks. Okay? So I hope that you have the dexterity necessary otherwise you're going to have a very difficult time having any flavor to what you eat um tonight at all. Now fortunately there's lots of white wine to to wash it down with. Okay? So we hope that that will make up for it. But you know what I want to emphas emphasize that is is that you know for many of you including myself.

[00:53:25]This will be a chance to taste your own identity.

[00:53:31]Okay. Eat white. Um not see yourself but taste yourself. And maybe with apologies to Harmonium I could just add a little bit to one of their songs.

[00:53:46]Okay. I turned my mirror around.

[00:53:51]Okay. I ate a slice of of white bread.

[00:53:58]Not not to see myself, but to feel myself. Now, if you don't like what you taste tonight, that's okay. It will mean that you have been unsettled. And we were talking about being unsettled rather than settlers before. it will mean that you have been unsettled and if you leave feeling hungry that's okay too okay uh that's okay uh because uh you know I I hope that we crave the northern and whiteness because whiteness doesn't have the greatest connotations here in Quebec it calls to mind the expression speak white um London um I'm missing her first name um right now um in 1968 uh you know composed this poem performed it um and it condemns the linguistic cultural and economic exploitation and oppression of French Canad speaking Canadians especially the Quebec war by the English language and by Anglo-American culture. So, you know, basically, you know, uh, white is the language of public space. You can speak French in the privacy of your home if you must, but not in my face, okay? Not in the face of the English boss, not in public. In English, you speak white. You know, this was actually uttered in 1887 when um you know, a French Canadian member of the National Legislature, you know, was addressing fellow parliamentarians in in French and was told speak white.

[00:55:52]Um that therefore speak white, you know, has a really bad taste for a lot of people. And you know prior to the quiet revolution of the 1960s in this province you had lemetra on okay and the English were the bosses in the factories and they made up merchant class. Um French Canadians you know some could become lawyers and notaries and physicians and even parliamentarians um but not captains of industry. Okay.

[00:56:27]Industry, commerce was under the exclusive control of the English. Um, and it's in that regard that the most crucial development of the 1960s um was the quiet revolution and the whole move to become mitra shenu masters in our own house. that manifested in a huge hydroelectric project, the James Bay, and it also uh manifested um in the bill or law rather 101. Okay. Um law 101 which sought to turn the tables on the way in which English had been the dominant language and French had been consigned you know to uh the privacy of the home. you have the establishment of the office Frances, the language police, okay? And they would go around um enforcing um the laws um of Quebec um regarding um the um way uh in which language was to be used on signs. Okay. Um, and I'm just trying to find in Quebec as as a result of law 101, which is a product of the 70s and the the Borasa government, public signs and commercial advertising must generally be in French, although they can also you be in French and another language. Okay, so you can you can have bilingual signs. The French version must be quote marketkedly predominant, meaning it has a much greater visual impact than any other language on the sign. This usually translates to French text being at least twice as large as the text in another language. Okay? So, you know, you're going to be tested on this on the last day. Uh I I we're asking you to please, you know, try and figure out the language laws of Quebec by looking at all the signs. Okay? And I'm just going to give you a few pointers um right now.

[00:58:29]Okay? That one right in the middle about the the um annual sale. Perfect. Okay.

[00:58:35]The English is half the size of the French. Okay, perfect. Perfect. Um, which of those two stop sign? There are three actually. Which of those two stop signs is correct? Are stop. Stop and then a word in uh in which one of those is is correct? Well, uh I'm not going to tell you because you have to observe and figure it out because you're going to have that test on Saturday uh when you have to show what you've been able to understand about this language. Um the other thing okay besides size is apostrophes. Okay in French there are no apostrophes. You have la dudson. Okay that is the Hudson's Bay company in English. So uh you know oh know what do you do with that dangling apostrophe? Well you bloody well eliminate it. Okay because French doesn't have uh apostrophes. And the whole point of this is to to promote and also preserve the French language in North America because it's so much under attack from all uh leison. Uh and so um you know you have here a very interesting way what the Hudson's Bay leaders said he just gave up and said um okay we're going to call ourselves the bay or la okay we're going to get around all this get rid of that bloody apostrophe by going in that route. Um, but here you have, you know, some more examples of, you know, conforming or nonconforming uses to the signs. Bvenue.

[01:00:07]This is a tourist brochure. You know, welcome to Montreal. Half the size.

[01:00:11]Excellent. Lee David's Tea.

[01:00:15][Music] Okay. No apostrophe. It's okay. Okay. No apostrophe. It doesn't look right, but it's okay because there's no apostrophe.

[01:00:25]No. All vehicles stop. Isn't the English there twice the size of the French borders? They're Canada's jurisdiction, not Quebec. Okay. So, the the language laws of Quebec don't apply. Anyway, Amazon is even conforming um to these laws. So, uh you know, that situation where you know, speak white um was was that crude insult uh it's been changed. Okay, it's been flipped. Uh, and it's really interesting the language politics in this province. A lot of English people feel really hard done by, feel discriminated against, okay, by having to have their language half the size of the French. Um, you know, I I think I I would just say to them, shove it, okay? Just don't don't be so petty.

[01:01:13]Um, I love having English put down. In fact, one of the problems that I have when my students write exams in French, I love the French language so much that their marks start creeping up. So, I have to suppress them. Okay? I have to consciously, you know, reduce the marks.

[01:01:31]Also, um, you know, French is a much more fluid language than in English. So, if you know, you have 400 words, you know, for an essay assignment in English, you're allowed 440 in French.

[01:01:41]Okay? So, French students get away with more words as well. It's quite fascinating. Um, but I'm not going to go any further into um uh this film then.

[01:01:51]Um, what I I want to just give you very briefly is that if you survive the incipid banquet called that for a reason tonight, what do you have to look forward to? Okay, because you know we've said that we are going to have a gala banquet um on on the Friday.

[01:02:10]Um well uh you know um I don't want to make you salivate because first of all you're going to have to you know make it through the banquet tonight. But you will be served on Friday at the gala banquet. You will be served Quebec's national dish its contribution to world cuisine. And if you don't know what that is okay then come on Friday and find out. Okay. You will truly taste Quebec on Friday. There will be colored popcorn. Okay. Not just plain popcorn.

[01:02:48]There will be celery. But this time the celery will come with cheese whiz. Okay. It will have that orange glow. Okay. That is so uh so so dear to many uh you know Canadians. Uh this is Craft she's with. Okay. a Canadian company. So, uh you know this is what uh you have to look forward to.

[01:03:12]There will be pasta, but it won't be blue spaghetti. Okay. Um more orange. Okay. Craft macaroni and cheese. Okay. A staple, a Canadian staple. But most important of all, okay, um is that uh there will be a ton of maple sugar products. Okay? And I'm just I I don't want to get you too excited, but these are little uh uh natural Canadian maple sugar. They're maple snaps. Um this is maple green tea, maple herbal tea. Um this is caramel alab.

[01:03:56]Um this more of these candies. If you didn't get one, you can have one. Um these are Planters peanuts.

[01:04:05]Um this is uh uh organic uh uh candies.

[01:04:12]Um there are even sugar bush baked beans made with pure maple syrup. Okay. So um you will come away from your experience on on Friday. food. They're crazy with all of the sugar in your system. Um, and now this may lead you to wonder, why are these Quebecers so obsessed with maple sugar products? Okay? And why do they think that we would want them? You know, maybe some of you are not interested and we'll skip Friday's banquet because you just don't have that much of a taste for for maple sugar products. Well, let me tell you um maple syrup is like gold to us. We consider consider maple syrup to be our oil. And as an expression of that, have you ever heard the story of the great Canadian maple syrup heist? Okay, probably not. Okay, you know about, you know, the great trail and robbery and this kind of thing, but here in Canada, here in Quebec, um it's the great Canadian maple syrup heist. Um you know, here there's a cartel and the cartel is controls um you know, collecting and then also distributing maple syrup.

[01:05:31]Okay, so you can only sell to the cartel if you're a producer. and they stockpile it and then they let it out to keep the uh the prices just like an oil oil cartel. And you know this um product of Quebec have a strategic reserve of maple syrup into which everybody has to contribute. in 2008.

[01:05:58]Um what appears to have happened um was that um uh actually um the contents of $9,571 barrels valued at $18.7 million had been stolen.

[01:06:19]How do you steal 9,571 barrels, big barrels of maple syrup?

[01:06:26]Well, this is a very sophisticated heist only in Quebec. Okay. Uh they went and they in this uh reservoir they would uh drain all the maple syrup out and put water back in. Okay. And then they went off and they went through Vermont to New Brunswick and then they they they they how do you then you fence it, right?

[01:06:44]They fenced all this illicit uh maple syrup there. Um and uh you know it was in such small batches that you know they weren't detected for a while. They were busted eventually and one guy got eight years in jail as a result. Okay. But the dream of stealing that much maple syrup, you know, that's what drove him, what possessed him. And it's probably a dream of many Quebec, you know, so to to have that much maple syrup. you could you could have you know your your pool full of it and this kind of thing. So uh you know this is what drives us. This is what really animates us and we want to try and kindle a similar passion in you which is why we have all these maple syrup products for you to taste. Um on Friday night you can put maple syrup on everything. Okay. Everything. I've been at sugaring off parties where that was what we did. Okay. Um poached egg maple syrup. Okay. Beans, maple syrup, everything. And uh I'm I'm I'm really looking forward to hearing uh what you have to say about it. Okay. But it's not just that. Okay. It's not just, you know, the mystique of this um maple sugar heist. Okay. One last thing that I just want to put on the table. There's also uh you know, other places have their Arab Spring or what have you.

[01:08:05]Okay. Here in Quebec, Maple Spring.

[01:08:11]Okay, if you want to get revolutionary um in this province, then you know it's got to be tinged with Maple. This was a massive student protest. They were basically protesting a hike in tuition fees. Um and uh they went out uh and and marched and marched and marched and they beat pots and pans. Uh and it was truly an extraordinary cacophony. They did it all night. Okay. And you know, you could never tell, the police could never tell where they would go next. So you had police helicopters with spotlights trying to track the movements of these hordes of students who were, you know, sort of clanging pots and and and shouting um and you know, uh really protesting the tuition hikes uh and also climate justice and all this kind of thing. They they were really, you know, very well mobilized. They were probably a lot of them had a lot of maple syrup uh in their system because it was that time of the year. But look at that you know all day and all night uh you know they marched negoti uh there was really uh an extraordinary movement and it was so vital so extraordinary um to be a part of that time. So, you know, even in our political life here in Quebec, um you know, it is uh through maple sugar uh that we fight uh and that we, you know, demand uh sort of equality and so forth.

[01:09:40]Okay. So, um this gives you a bit of background. Okay. I think that you'll be able to understand uh things a little bit better in this way. You know, what what you see going on around you. So um I just want to close um with uh uh two things. One is that um we have a lot of thanks um and uh they are actually at the end of the um um the book of abstracts. But I want to thank especially um uh the graduate students who um are uh the team that have enabled this to happen. you all know if only via the internet Craig Farcash who is sitting right here. Um um extraordinary the number of hours he has put in responding to all of your queries and uh he's getting paid for it.

[01:10:35]Okay, we don't believe in volunteers in this university. He's getting paid for it but he had to sacrifice so much in terms of his thesis, you know, other things in order to actually make this happen. So, uh, we are tremendously indebted, uh, to Craig. Um, and if you have any issues, don't come to me.

[01:10:53]Go to him. Um, thanks, Craig. Uh, and then Lara, I don't know if Lara and Oral Lee are here. They're actually probably setting up, okay? Because they are preparing the banquet for you. I'm deeply, uh, indebted to them. They are the front of house. You know, Craig is the the backroom manager. They are the front of house. and also Ming Fon uh and Abigail Berg uh they are the curators of the multiensory art gallery did an extraordinary job putting that together uh because you know academics are difficult to organize but artists are even worse okay artists have so many particular demands u but we love you okay we love you uh for all that you do to actually bring so much more to this conference um I'd come over to extend And um you know my sympathies uh to all the international students based at US universities who could not be with us uh in person and can only participate online because it was just too risky for them to cross the US Canada border. How can that be? How can that be? Um such a disappointment to them, such a disappointment to us as well. For those of you who did make it, for those of you who did make it here from the States, I want to say that you can talk about EDI all you want. Okay? You can talk about it all the time because here it's protected by the Constitution. Okay? The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom says in section 151, everyone is equal and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination. You know, blah blah blah. Then okay section 152 this right equal the right to equality does not preclude laws designed to ameliate disadvantageous conditions that exist because of these factors. Okay. So um a federal law uh that seeks through what's called affirmative action to ameliate the condition of people that have been um you know sort of marginalized by these forms of discrimination.

[01:13:09]That's fine. It's it's got constitutional protection. So, as Trump goes about dismantling and indeed banishing EDI from the states, um you've got the opposite uh approach here. Also, uh for those of you who are visiting from the states, um we have breakout rooms, okay? Um and these have padded soundproof walls, okay? Okay. and they are completely um disconnected from the internet. Okay, so no messages from south of the border can interfere with you and you can rage as much as you like. Okay, so these are special. We also have a a hockey clinic for you and I know you may think well what use is hockey uh you know if you live in Florida and so forth but actually there are some techniques which are really good techniques. One is called elbows up. Okay. And elbows up, okay, is when you always have your elbows up when you are playing hockey. Okay. Other people, you know, the hip check is one way to stop an opponent, but the elbows up is far more effective. Okay. So, in Canada, uh, you know, recently because of the things that Trump has been saying, um, you know, um, there was an expression going around, elbows up Canada. Okay?

[01:14:25]And we want to teach those of you who are here from the states this technique of elbows up because you're going to need it when you go back to the states and have to face all those neocons.

[01:14:34]Okay? You are going to need to protect yourself and we're just saying elbows up is a very good technique. Um now um this image went viral um a few weeks ago. Okay. Uh it's a very interesting image. Okay. The trade war between Canada and the US extends to birds as well. Um this is a case where the goose was alone um not part of a flock which suggests that it was probably either very old or sick and it was on this ice flow and this American eagle thought ah a nice plump Canadian goose and was going to make a meal of it. And so the American eagle lands, okay, and the goose, uh, and this is all captured on film, you know, was so ferocious, even though it doesn't have anything like the actual deadly power of the American eagle, that the American eagle gave up and flew on. And so, um, Canadians took heart from this, okay? If we can just, you know, stand up long enough, this nightmare of the trade war, uh, that Trump has embroiled us in, uh, will will be over. Now, see, I'm not going to the US anytime soon, so I can say these things, and I even have them written on my laptop, but just a warning to those of you who are visiting from the States, erase your laptop before you go back, okay? Because otherwise, uh, you don't know what's going to happen at the border. Um, okay. Uh, this has been sort of a political history of the census, uh, as well as an overview of sensory history. Thank you, uh, for attending to it. Um and uh we will be actually those of you who are brave enough uh going upstairs for the incipid banquet um in a few minutes time. So actually I will take if you have any questions. There's a a few minutes left um you know whatever you make of this diet tribe um that I've subjected you to for the last the last while.

[01:16:40]Okay, any questions?

[01:16:44]Um, it's really hard to get a question in edgewise when somebody is one of the things I should say is that see I my my one of my latest books is a a manifesto, a sensory studies manifesto. I can only speak in slogans now uh is wonderful.

[01:16:59]It's wonderfully liberating. You should write a manifesto. You don't have to engage in reasoned arguments. You just come up with slogans. The senses are made, not given. uh and and ones like that. It's it's really liberating. Um so uh you know, write a manifesto, get it out of your system, but actually you'll be so addicted to it that you'll probably keep on writing. Please.

[01:17:22]And actually, I'm sorry, you're going to have to come down if you wouldn't mind.

[01:17:37]Thank you.

[01:17:40]Hello. Thank you very much for your talk tonight. Um, my question is about the five senses because you were saying they're quite limiting. So, I was wondering if you can expand a little bit on the other conception of senses and how we can possibly go beyond the limitations of having this five senses.

[01:18:00]Yeah, thank you. It's a it's a very interesting question. Um and um you know we have it since Aristotle that there are five senses and and no more uh and uh Aristotle also however talked about the common sense which is impossible to square with his series his theory. It's not a sixth sense but it is there very interesting and it has a wonderful history that has been explored in a book called um the inner touch archaeology of a sensation an extraordinary work of intellectual history. So that's the first thing. Um but yes this idea of a five sense sensorium um you know the idea of five senses uh it's a symbolic construct. Okay. uh just like you know you've got the seven days of the week or the three ages of man or the four seasons or the five seasons or what have you. Um it uh actually is as much concerned you know to square with a cosmology as it is you know an anatomical enumeration. So there are lots of um neuroscientists and so forth now who actually say there are many more than five senses and they're right.

[01:19:17]Okay, they're right. Uh you know Aristotle didn't really talk about proprioception or kinesthesia.

[01:19:24]Proprioception is the sense of the body in space kinesthesia of of movement. Um and there are lots of actual you know senses that have popped up at times and then been suppressed. There's a a a wonderful play from the 1600s called Lingua or the battle of the tongue and the five senses for supremacy. And it's a you know it's a a wonderful tale about you know Lua who is female wants to be counted among the senses but the five senses say no there's only ever been five. You're not wanted and there's no room for you anyway. and they have a very lively debate uh you know that is that is fascinating to contemplate. Um so um you know what we as anthropologists do but also as historians is we look at these different constructions of uh the sensorium um and we don't think that the neuroscientists should necessarily have the final word.

[01:20:25]They've traced various receptors and they think uh that they can answer the question you know how many senses there are in terms of neurology in terms of neurobiology but actually there have been moments in western history and there are many instances across cultures um you know when you have very different enumerations.

[01:20:46]One especially fascinating period was the Scottish Enlightenment and the Scottish philosophers, you know, David Hume um and and so forth inventing senses right, left and center. They invented the idea of a public sense and a common sense as we understand it. Uh and also the sense of beauty and and so forth. all these senses that have no basis in physiology whatsoever um but which they um discerned as being senses.

[01:21:17]So um as far as I'm concerned uh you know the senses are innumerable. Okay the senses are innumerable and really the thing is it depends on how you use them. There are lots of examples of senses that we might have but that we've lost for not using them. One of those is the sense of direction. Okay. Uh you know, okay, uh you know, uh how good is your sense of direction when you're relying on this all the time? Um this is actually a very old phone. It's not very smart. And therefore, I have to rely on my own sense of direction when I go places. That often means that there are a lot of detours and you know, this kind of thing because I don't have, you know, an app telling me which way to go. But I pride myself on the fact that I've still got a sense of direction. Whereas most people who are relying on these um you know maybe they don't have it anymore.

[01:22:13]Maybe that is a sense uh and you know one though uh that can atrophy that can disappear. There are lots of senses that we could and should be developing. Uh and that's a fascinating story. So wonderful question, you know, and really um the five sense model has been out there for a long time. Um and it's still part of popular culture. Um but we need to get beyond it. But you know why we won't get beyond it? All those children's books on the five senses.

[01:22:46]Okay? If you look up if you look up books five senses okay just like people who are in sensory studies who don't like the fact that we've occupied the field you know if you look there there are books and books and books all these children's books on the five senses okay first of all that suggests senses are for children what are you adults doing being interested in senses okay senses are for kids but secondly you know it socializes them into thinking that They have five senses and the senses are discreet. Uh one is called you can't eat a pickle with your ear. Okay. Well, yes.

[01:23:25]Okay, that's true. You can't eat a pickle with your ear. But why not? Okay.

[01:23:31]Why not try? But children are discouraged, okay, from doing that.

[01:23:36]Sesthesia, no trace of synthesia in any of those books. Um and so they're damping down the senses of children. We need to liberate the senses of children by burning all of those books. Okay? Or else books that will actually, you know, teach them to experiment with their senses and discover, you know, the varieties of sensory experience. Again, just look and put in books, five senses, page after page of kitty books, kitty literature on the senses. Okay? Uh you won't find our books until much, much further down. I'm not jealous, okay? I'm just saying that this is a problem. Uh we should resist it. Okay? We have to roll back this tide of children's literature on the senses.