Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society

Abstract

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a 20th century French philosopher, gives us tools for thinking through how our body itself is never divided into explicitly separate powers, but all sensations are always already synesthetic. By being asked certain questions, I can be lead to SEE how something FEELS, or HEAR how something is solid or hollow. Because our senses are always implicated within one another, we can think of always new and open ways for engaging works of art – I can embrace my synesthetic perception and ask “What Color is this sound?” Further, later Merleau-Ponty presses on how our own intersubjective commitments are also caught up within our perceptual world itself. In this presentation, I will dive into how a pedagogue can embrace the intermodality of the senses – including the intersubjective dimension – when perceiving art with their student. What questions can we ask so that a student doesn’t take a certain sensation for granted, but really, creatively embraces the experience itself with the whole of their body? And how can we help them become attuned to the intersubjective commitments they bring to bear on even the most basic perception? I hope to dig into both Merleau-Ponty’s theoretical foundation for such aesthetic and pedagogical work, as well as the practical side of what questions we might ask of our students in helping them to perceive more richly and openly.