From Organ to Receptor? The Future of the Western Scientific Sensorium

It is not uncommon to fasten the “Western” sensorial system to Aristotle who imagined the human senses as a quintet comprising sound, sight, smell, taste, and touch (Aristotle [c. 350 BCE] 1957b:219; Classen 1993). By the first half of the 19th Century—at the time Auguste Comte attempted to organize the sciences—the five-part conceptualization would remain (Comte [1842] 1875:374). The “salient” or “special” senses would be associated with organs or body parts, operating as both physical site of sensorial action as well as synecdoche for the sense itself (e.g., the hand would come to represent the haptic sense). Recent science, however, has substantiated the importance of many other senses beyond the Aristotelian quintet, among them, interoception or the “gut sense” and the vestibular sense, which promotes balance and an understanding of the body in space. This paper asks: Is Western science steadily departing from an organ-bound notion of the senses toward a conceptual system build around keen attention to reception—an expanded receptor-based system (including nociception, proprioception, thermoception, etc.)? And if Western science is moving toward a receptor-based model, what are the theoretical and practical implications for both ethnographers and the craft?
Keywords: History of science, ethnography, the sensorium, prediction, technology

Arturo Esquivel (Sociology, Bishops University, Canada)

Proving Fear: The Corporeal Witness and its Role in Asylum Seeking

A credible fear test is the legal procedure to determine whether an asylum claimant qualifies as an asylum seeker under US asylum law. The credible fear test attempts to prove as “objective fact” the “significant possibility” that the asylum claimant has been or will be persecuted or tortured. At the heart of the credible fear test is a series of interviews. In each interview, the asylum claimant tells their story to different audiences to convince them that their fear is well-founded. The documentation of their stories through photographs, legal documents, and videos plays a key role in establishing their credibility. This paper presents the cases of two Central American asylum seekers’ attempts at applying for asylum in the US. This paper argues that the body, through the display of scars, maiming, or mutilation, becomes a credible witness in supporting asylum claimants’ accounts. The body and its scar tissue objectify fear. Fear, as an embodied emotion, becomes visible, quantifiable, and relatable. In the preparation of their dossiers to apply for asylum in the legal office of a migrant shelter in the city of Tijuana, the paper traces the preparation process asylum seekers undergo and the role photographs of their bodies play in requesting asylum.
Keywords: embodiment, acknowledgement, credible fear test, asylum seekers, US-Mexico border

Jules Galbraith (Media Studies, Concordia)

Aesthetic approaches to ethical practice: dry-stone walling as metaphor

I propose to present, in narrative form or as artists’ talk, my findings from a research-creation project undertaken in the fall of 2024 wherein I took up dry-stone walling as a medium to think through practices of attention and attunement. Dry-stone walling is a building technique employing no fixative media. A solid and resilient wall relies on surface friction between stones and weight, as well as on the sensitivity of the builder who employs tacit knowledge to place discrete objects in connection with one another. My project entailed contextualizing walling, particularly dry-stone walling, within the early enclosure movement in Britain. Drystone walls and walling offer potent figures to explore how relationships–between human and human, as well as human and non-human–are transfigured by techniques and technologies of sensing and apprehension: whether reduced to commodity and property under capitalism, or refigured as vital, ethically relevant, and alive through techniques of sensing and thought that espouse a principle of non-domination. I will present documentation of my experiments in dry stone stacking. My reflections, including the ethical and theoretical implications of my practice, will be presented as a spoken component.