We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
'Känn på det här': Om sinnlighet som en skev och dekolonial metod.
- Authors
LÖNN, MARIA
- Abstract
In this article, the importance of the body and the senses for production of knowledge is discussed. It offers a skewed and decolonial method that highlights three sensual themes: the tactile, the haptic and the smell. The theoretical lens of critical race and whiteness studies has privileged the gaze as a sensorial method over other senses: “the other” is for instance created through observations, the making visible of whiteness is made possible through the exposure of invisible whiteness. While the disembodied gaze has been privileged as a rational scientific apparatus, smell and touch have been rejected, categorized as the most physical of senses. Hence, all senses have not been considered as reliable sources of scientific knowledge. Yet, human hierarchies and differences are created across the entire sensory register. In order to fully understand and challenge othering practices more senses than the gaze needs to be explored. My contribution to critical race and whiteness studies, hence, consists in bestowing the body and the senses centrality in the production of knowledge. By doing so I offer a skewed and decolonial sensory method. Taking the question of which senses counts as carriers of knowledge as a point of departure in a discussion on epistemology, I propose a method in which senses beyond the gaze are attributed scientific value. In order to clarify how the senses are being used in order to structure and maintain human hierarchies, I offer two empirical examples from my research: Russian women’s fashion practices and the sound and movements of sensory orientalism in Russian opera and ballet. These sets of empirical material share a theoretical theme, namely how ideas about the “un/civilized” and “the barbaric” create boundaries between people and how this is manifested in multi-sensory ways. In the article, I describe how I have worked with the skewed and sensory methodology proposed here.
- Subjects
SOMATIC sensation; SCIENTIFIC knowledge; SCIENTIFIC apparatus &; instruments; RUSSIANS; SMELL; GAZE
- Publication
Lambda Nordica, 2021, Vol 26, Issue 4 / 1, p150
- ISSN
1100-2573
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.34041/ln.v26.767