Hi Brenden,
I wouldn't say you made a fuss - I'd generally agree that
'ocularcentrism' risks becoming over used as an explanatory approach, so
good that you flagged that.
In general I'm very interested in the relationship between the sensorium
and out being-in-the-world. Anyone else working or playing in this area?
Adrian
[log in to unmask] wrote:
> Thanks for the information, Adrian. I don't know why I made such a
> fuss - I evidently have a pavlovialn reaction to this word
>
> Brendan
>
> --On 18 May 2007 11:00:25 +0100 Adrian Harris <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Hi Brendan,
>>
>> I'd agree that we need explore this whole topic carefully and I think
>> I've tended to grab the notion of ocularcentrism and run a little too
>> far
>> with it in the past. But certainly a very live topic, and one pursed at
>> another forthcoming event:
>>
>> Beyond Text? Image:Voice::Sound:Object. Synaesthetic and Sensory
>> Practices in Anthropology
>> http://www.raifilmfest.org.uk/conference.htm
>>
>> This is one I plan to attend. Several sessions seem to be widening the
>> discussion and exploring practice as much as theory. As I have an
>> academic and practical background in photography I'm particularly
>> interested in how it "might be possible for anthropology to communicate
>> human experience and construct forms of knowledge through different
>> combinations of visual, material and acoustic media".
>>
>> Might see some of you there.
>> Best wishes,
>> Adrian
>>
>> [log in to unmask] wrote:
>>> Dear Adrian,
>>>
>>> it looks like an interesting series, but 'ocularcentrism' is, I think,
>>> a red herring - or perhaps I should say blind alley. Jay's book offers
>>> impressive encapsulations of modern French thought, but its central
>>> idea (a bit contradictory, perhaps, that it should have one at all) is
>>> even by the author's own account without clear consequence. It
>>> certainly will profit nobody to become self-conscious about the use of
>>> vision-based metaphors: blind and partially-sighted people have no
>>> inhibitions about saying 'I see', meaning 'I understand' and neither
>>> should anyone else. Were we to abandon this concept we would be
>>> neither worse nor better off - though more probably the latter - in
>>> our studies of embodiment. I do not mean by this to suggest that the
>>> cultural status of vision oughtn't to be a subject of study - quite
>>> the contrary. But for that to be possible, and for Jay's book to have
>>> any use,we should take the term he coined as a stimulus to enquiry,
>>> rather than as naming a foregone conclusion. Besides which, in a way,
>>> to place an emphasis on the 'other senses' in compensating for the
>>> preeminence of vision is to risk inventing new kinds of
>>> instrumentalisation and disembodiment: rival specialisations or
>>> reifications.
>>>
>>> With best wishes, Brendan Prendeville
>
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