Sensuous Scholarship

Paul Stoller

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 1997

Sensuous Scholarship

Paul Stoller

In the series Contemporary Ethnography

https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812203134

Overview
Contents

About this book

Among the Songhay of Mali and Niger, who consider the stomach the seat of personality, learning is understood not in terms of mental activity but in bodily terms. Songhay bards study history by "eating the words of the ancestors," and sorcerers learn their art by ingesting particular substances, by testing their flesh with knives, by mastering pain and illness.

In Sensuous Scholarship Paul Stoller challenges contemporary social theorists and cultural critics who—using the notion of embodiment to critique Eurocentric and phallocentric predispositions in scholarly thought—consider the body primarily as a text that can be read and analyzed. Stoller argues that this attitude is in itself Eurocentric and is particularly inappropriate for anthropologists, who often work in societies in which the notion of text, and textual interpretation, is foreign.

Throughout Sensuous Scholarship Stoller argues for the importance of understanding the "sensuous epistemologies" of many non-Western societies so that we can better understand the societies themselves and what their epistemologies have to teach us about human experience in general.

Author / Editor information

Paul Stoller is Professor of Anthroopology at West Chester University and the author of The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Prologue: The Scholar’s Body Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Part One: Embodied Practices Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part Two: Body and Memory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
Part Three: Embodied Representations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
Epilogue: Sensuous Ways of Knowing/Living Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
Films Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 184
Illustrations
- Other: 11 illus.
Keywords: Anthropology; Folklore; Linguistics

eBook

Published: November 24, 2010
ISBN: 9780812203134