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Christian de Quincey |
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 The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than Human World by David Abram (Vintage, 1997) review by Christian de Quincey  There was a time when humans spoke with the voice of the Earth. Our ancestors’ senses were alert to messages coming to them from the wild world of nature. They were immersed in meanings—meanings that resonated in their own flesh. In "The Spell of the Sensuous," philosopher and ecologist David Abram explores the deep roots of human language in the preverbal responses of our bodies to the flux of living nature. With the skill of a poet and the precision of a philosopher, Abram takes us into the story of language itself. He tells us how, as a sleight-of-hand magician, he was able to enter the world of indigenous magicians and to closely observe their intimate relations with animals and plants. Then, as a philosopher trained in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, he weaves this narrative into an incisive and illuminating account of the genesis of language in preverbal communication between the human body and the surrounding body of nature. We are all born with this ancestral heritage, with the ability to “read” and respond to the sensuous Earth. But with the discovery and learning of written words, literate cultures lost something special—even something sacred—that had been integral to the oral traditions. With the written word, language fell silent, and we became strangers in our own land. The consequences have been drastic. Not only have our own words lost their rootedness in our embodied relationship to nature, we have used the power of disembodied words to create widespread ecological havoc. Abram’s message is simple enough: Human languages have emerged in relationship with the wider animate world, and without this connection our words lose their deep source of meaning and coherence. Regaining this connection, however, may not be so simple: It requires of us a radical reassessment of our place and role in the world. Abram’s book is a poetic and thoughtful approach to this reassessment, and a passioned invitation to reclaim our kinship with the flesh of the Earth. |
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