Probing bodily depths following a brain injury

Keywords: phenomenology, neuroscience, body, arts, vibration
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 14

Abstract

Imagine, from one day to the next, that your sensory world is transformed. Sights, sounds, balance, and a host of other senses about which you were previously unaware, make themselves felt in new and destabilizing ways. Such is the experience of people with Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs). Michel Serres describes the body as a ‘black box’ in which a stimulus is transformed into sensory information. TBIs highlight both the mystery occurring in that black box, and the effect when habitual forms of sensory functioning unravel.

Binding together corporeal and cognitive significations, the senses involve not only interaction with things external to the body, but also, through the senses, outer worlds permeate and shape inner ones. The sudden and transformed state of occupying new sensory worlds induces resonances that are embodied, affective, emotional, and difficult to ignore. People may thus sense and perceive their bodies as immersed in fields of vibration which they absorb, transmit, and diffuse in ways that can be deeply dissonant.

The challenge is how to communicate awareness of these bodily ruptures. Adopting a neurophenomenological lens, this presentation will use autoethnograpy and the arts to explore and express bodily experiences of vibration and dissonance.