Sensorial Group session

SENSORIAL GROUP

"Hearing Voices: Psycho-sensorial Reconstructions of Past Experiences" 

8/04/25, 13:30h, Sala Seminari iHC

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Organised by Tasio, Ned, Elena and Aurelia

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Historians have demonstrated how the reconstruction of experiments serves to retrieve tacit knowledge involved (gestures, skills). But rather than seeking the “certainty” of knowledge, here we intend to reconstruct something always discarded, unfixed, uncertain, and unknown: the sensorial, affective, and embodied experiences of experiments. We are already aware that experience is historically situated and experienced in different contingent ways by participants. However, we contend that the problem of the communication of experience is something that troubles the core of historical research and the limits of epistemology. To examine this, we require new methods–new modes of scholarly communication that reflexively problematize “communication.” We argue that Spiritualism and its associated practices–a realm where psycho-physiological experiences of extraordinary sensory stimuli were in play–are a key repository for inspiring new methods of this sort.

In this workshop, we will rehearse our intervention in the "Experimental Histories of Science Workshop" to be held at UCL on the 25th of April. Your feedback will be crucial for us! 

PLEASE BRING YOUR EARPHONES, IDEALLY WITH BLUETOOTH