Synaesthesia and the Encounter with Other - Assignment Example

Synaesthesia and the Encounter with OtherToward the end of his essay, Abram writes: “Far from presenting a distortion of their factual relation to the world, the animistic discourse of indigenous, oral people is an inevitable counterpart of their immediate, synaesthetic engagement with the land that they inhabit”(p. 55). In our experience teaching this essay, student ignore the section on “Synaesthesia and the Encounter with Other.” As you reread, and as an exercise, assume that this is the most important section of the essay.

What is Abram saying here? What is he doing in this section? Why is this argument important to him? Do you buy it?What Abram is trying to say in this passage is how humans can speak to innate objects such as trees and rocks. To most people this just sounds insane and it clearly shows how humans have become alienated with nature. In ancient time, our ancestors used to communicate with nature and this kept them in touch with their inner self. However, due to the advent of alphabets and farming conversations with other species or nature has become outdated.

What Abram is trying to do is show that human communities can primarily know themselves just by how they are reflected back by nature including trees, animals, and rocks that they are constantly and directly connected with. This dependence to nature is evident on all the continents of the world by the varied forms of identification, but is usually referred to as totemism. Abram further argues his point by saying, “the articulate speech of trees or mountains” is due to human engagement with nature via synaesthetic convergence of two forms of senses, mainly hearing and seeing.

The reason why the argument is important to him is because imaginary distortion such as conversations with trees is the very structure of perception. This is because the imaginative interaction of human senses during their everyday encounters is the only way for them to link ourselves with nature and hence letting nature weave into our experiences. This means that all the inert objects that surround us in life are both powerful and expressive entities. I agree with his point of view since imagination and emotion are an important part of human understanding.

This is because that which humans perceive through their senses will invoke further understanding through emotion and imagination. Whatever we see in nature will invoke deep feelings to the soul.Work CitedAbram, David. "Synaesthesia and the Encounter with Other." New York: Cengage, 2001. Pp 50-58. Print.