Sensuous Scholarship

Introduction: The Texture of Memory

Introduction: The Texture of Memory In Part One we saw how sensuous localized epistemologies shape cultural practices among the Songhay people of the Republic of Niger. Songhay sorcerers eat power-in the form of what they call·kusu-which can both empower and overpower their bodies. Songhay griots eat history and as a consequence are "owned" by the "old words" they have ingested. In Part Two, the chapters suggest that embodied processes-the construction and reconstruction of local epistemologies-spark cultural memories. To use the language of Paul Connerton, flesh both inscribes and incorporates cultural memory and history.' These memories may take the form of a scar that recalls a tortuous episode. They may be triggered by the stylized movements of dance, the melodic contours of music, the fragrant odors of perfume, or, perhaps, the rhapsody of song. Usually these sensuous modalities provoke memories-and histories- "from below," histories of the dispossessed that historians never recorded. These are memories of existential content: pain, hunger, abuse, struggle, mirth, pleasure-the very substance of a sensuous scholarship. As such, the elicitation and presentation of embodied cultural memories fleshes out the story of a people. In this way scholars are able to explore the multifaceted textures of memory, which can profoundly humanize our reconstructions of the past. Embodied cultural memories, however, do not constitute a thorough exploration of memory or history. For that, one needs to combine text and body, analysis and sensibility. In the chapters of Part Two, I attempt to achieve this scholarly balance. Chapter 3, "Embodying Colonial Memories," argues that spirit possession among the Songhay peoples is a theater of embodied cultural memory in which fundamental existential themes are presented and re-presented through odor, sound, movement. Chapter 4, "'Conscious' Ain't Consciousness," considers how the senses order and re-order cultural memory. In both chapters , I suggest how and why a more sensuous approach to scholarship might expand and improve scholarly investigations of the past. ...