The Misplaced Concreteness of the Senses

JOIN WEBINAR

Jan 31 2022
noon

erin manning + brian massumi

The body’s sensing is inseparable from processes of abstraction that extend life into incorporeal realms. From sonsensuous similarity to amodal perception, from reaching-toward to preacceleration, from distantism to synaesthesia, from autistic perception to lived abstraction, sensation and perception exceed the model of sense impression inherited from classical empiricism. This talk will draw on the radical empiricism of William James and the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead to explore the ways in which perception is already a mode of thought and thought is feeling.

This event (co-sponsored by the Graduate Group in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, the Department of English, and the Center for Experimental Ethnography) is part of the 2021-2022 Penn Anthropology Colloquium on “Sense.”  

erin manning

brian massumi

Erin Manning is a Canadian cultural theorist and political philosopher as well as a practicing artist in the areas of dance, fabric design, and interactive installation. Manning's research spans the fields of art, political theory, and philosophy.

Brian Massumi  is a Canadian philosopher and social theorist. Massumi's research spans the fields of art, architecture, cultural studies, political theory and philosophy. His work explores the intersection between power, perception, and creativity to develop an approach to thought and social action bridging the aesthetic and political domains. He is a retired professor in the Communications Department of the Université de Montréal.[1]