Handbook of Writing, Literacies, and Education in Digital Cultures

Abstract

The human senses have always been vital to literacy practices, but are seldom acknowledged within literacy studies in education. Historically, the senses have been central to the aesthetics of representation across cultures (Howes & Classen, 2014). The senses are essential to everyday communication practices, necessitated by an expanding range of new technologies that interact with a greater range of the sensorium. Devos (2014, p.68) contends: "Sensory perception constitutes the primordial channel through which a person acquires knowledge about the material world". So too, the senses are primordial to channels of communication with the world and with others. What is needed in current understandings of literacy practices is systematic attention to the role of the full sensorium evoked in the process of meaning making. In this chapter, we build up examples of the sensorial dimensions of reading, extending Mills' (2016) theory of sensory literacies to focus on the role of haptics and interpretive meaning making possibilities with interactive tablet eBooks. The theory of sensory literacies concerns the multisensorial nature of literacy and communication practices that varies across cultures, practices and technologies. This theory extends ongoing work located in sensory studies more broadly, and draws on an anthropology of the senses. Some of the key principles include: a) the prioritization of the role of the human body in communication practices; b) a recognition that the mind is not separate from the body, nor the role of the body taken for granted, but mind and body are seen an integral to literacy practices; and c) a critique of Western hierarchies of knowledge which privilege the visual over other forms of perception and expression, at the expense of researching the whole body in communication practices. HANDBOOK OF WRITING, LITERACIES AND EDUCATION IN DIGITAL CULTURES Chapter 2: Sensory Literacies, the Body and Digital Media 2 Of particular interest is the neglected realm of the non-visual senses, including haptic communication (involving touch), olfaction (smell), taste, and locomotion (Mills, 2016). This has been demonstrated through sensory ethnographic research in which kinesis-movement of the body, limbs, hands and feet-was central to the digital filmmaking of Indigenous and non-Indigenous children (Mills, Comber & Kelly, 2013). The children filmed themselves as they glided down slides and balanced on walls, or used breath to blow dandelions. Walking feet and climbing bodies were salient in the children's films, essential to both the process and product of text making. It is timely for literacy educators to attend more consciously to the senses in the study of communication practices in everyday life and in education sites. There has been an upsurge of agreement among philosophers, sociologists, ecologists, ethnographers and sensory anthropologists that the role of the body must be taken into account seriously in theories of knowing, perceiving, and practising (Howes, 2003; Pink, 2009). The burgeoning sen...