The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

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It's a hit!

Abram has fleshed out a stance in the world that is of great importance. The first chapters of this book are a brilliant look at both the impact th... (show more)

Abram has fleshed out a stance in the world that is of great importance. The first chapters of this book are a brilliant look at both the impact the "more-than-human" world has had on our languages, and the disassociation from that world that has occurred with our maturation into modern civilization. But after slugging through chapters six and seven, I was glad to hear the author's recognition that the tumultuous, collapsing world we see around us has been borne, not just of language and the alphabet (as this book discusses), but also of agriculture and technology.

I do feel that Abram falls into the same trap as many enlightened anthropologists and cultural enthusiasts. He rightly feels there is little difference between ourselves, the moderns, and those who created and maintained the oral cultures of the past, the aboriginals. But he makes the wrong choice by ascribing to them the same clear-headed intentional abilities we would like to claim for ourselves.

More directly, it is not that oral cultures were as wise and capable as we are; rather, it is we who are as backward and primitive as those who would believe the Raven was once human. Our world view is no less of a collection of stories cobbled together in the dark fog that is our lives.

The Coda to this book brings a new relevance to the thinking first voiced by Nietzsche 125 years ago, "The falseness of a judgment is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgment... The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life preserving, species-preserving..." BGE (IV)

Abram updates this view, and does a brilliant job of articulating it as an understanding of the world as "sensuous". This brings us back to our place not just IN the world, but OF the world. We would do well to heed his words and search for a new balance and respect for this very much more-than-human world we share. (show less)

 

 

by Chris Lindholm

No, it's a flop!

Beautifully written. Offers an interested perspective that I had not considered before... there were many loopholes in his reasoning which have bee... (show more)

Beautifully written. Offers an interested perspective that I had not considered before... there were many loopholes in his reasoning which have been discussed at length in various other reviews that I have seen.... but what lost it for me was when he claimed that the mosquito spirits gave him that "cyclical trance we call malaria" which caused him to see visions. The beginning was beautiful but most of the rest of the book was boring... (show less)

 

 

by Jesse Elliott

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  To be honest, this book was rather challenging and over my head, but fascinating and probably worth re-reading at some point. I seem to remember one or two things that I disagreed with. Well, not disagree with, exactly, but, in one instance, he talked about how a lot of hunter/gatherer societies (I don't remember how he referred to them, he may have said "primitive," but in the most respectful definition of that phrase, referring to technology and not culture or sophistication), h... (show more)

  To be honest, this book was rather challenging and over my head, but fascinating and probably worth re-reading at some point. I seem to remember one or two things that I disagreed with. Well, not disagree with, exactly, but, in one instance, he talked about how a lot of hunter/gatherer societies (I don't remember how he referred to them, he may have said "primitive," but in the most respectful definition of that phrase, referring to technology and not culture or sophistication), how a lot of their languages use neither the past nor present tense, and how this informs their worldview in a way that somehow made their way of thinking less linear and more engaged with the here and now. I'm probably not doing justice to his claim, but I felt that I wanted to see more justification for it, other than the fact that it's a really interesting point, that the way a language operates can affect the way in which a person engages with reality. Interesting claim, but it didn't seem very scientific, or backed up by some kind of anthropological study. Not that anthropology is always scientific.

  Of course, he may have provided justification without my knowing it, because I would read several pages and feel like I hadn't been taking in anything that I was reading at all, but I don't think that he did.

  It did seem like a fascinating book and I feel as though I would do well to re-read it and absorb more fully what he was talking about. I think that it probably is a very wise book, but I don't know for sure because I needed to use more of my brain cells while reading it than I was prepared to.

  The author: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrLxEKgTGZ4 (show less)

   

  by Facebook-gebruiker on Aug 02, 2009 at 05:04PM

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  Interesting read on the relationship beween human consciousness and the natural world. I don't think, however, that Abrams has it right when he implicates the technology of writing as that which broke the link....I'm reading Abram's hypothesis against Olsen's The World on Paper--in light of my pedestrian understanding of technological determinism vs social constructivism.

   

  by Barbara Petronelli on Aug 19, 2008 at 12:36PM

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