Sensuous Scholarship / / Paul Stoller.

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 subst...

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Bibliographic Details
Superior document:Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn Press eBook Package Complete Collection
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Place / Publishing House:Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2010]
©1997
Year of Publication:2010
Language:English
Series:Contemporary Ethnography
Online Access:
Physical Description:1 online resource (184 p.) :; 11 illus.
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Other title:Frontmatter --
Contents --
Acknowledgments --
Prologue: The Scholar's Body --
Part One: Embodied Practices --
Part Two: Body and Memory --
Part Three: Embodied Representations --
Epilogue: Sensuous Ways of Knowing/Living --
Notes --
Works Cited --
Films Cited --
Index
Summary: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.
Format:Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
ISBN:9780812203134
9783110413458
9783110413618
9783110442526
DOI:10.9783/9780812203134
Access:restricted access
Hierarchical level:Monograph
Statement of Responsibility: Paul Stoller.