lost senses

this is again mainly from 'i am my body' by elisabeth moltmann-wendel.

she discusses the idea of thinking with the body, in contrast to today's prevasive split of the senses from the body. "our senses are antennae of the body. they communicated to us processes in the outside world and conditions in our own bodies." (90).

i was most touched by the discussion of the tactile senses -- smell, taste, feeling, etc. "we are least aware of the tactile senses... and their significance vanishes most rapidly in public" (92). moltmann-wendel points out how these senses have been privatized and cannot be objectified. "smelling, tasting, feeling, remain in the sphere of intuition and accordingly are regarded as subjective, unprovable and deceptive... not to want to have perceptive tactile senses, to forget nose, mouth and skin as active and passive sense organs with a vital function for our life and experience, thought and action, is to rob our bodies of their own capacity for expression" (92).

moreover, i especially resonated with her connected between women and senses, and (in some) the corresponding 'taming' of the senses in women.
"women have their own experiences and their own history of the senses. traditionally woman is fixated on the senses, while man is given the apparent opposite to the senses, reason. thus sensuality and understanding are divided so that they are gender-specific... women have been revered and honoured as objects of sensuality, and at the same time that means that their capacity for undersatnding has been underestimated. the expression of the senses, the representation of them in the family or even in public, has long been regarded as their special task. but this sense has lon gbeen without relevance in society" (93).
"here something has been inculcated which is presumably not rooted in every woman. many women today recall that their 'own sense' had to be tamed or driven out... this was regarded as being uncontrollable, contrary, irrational -- quite different from havine one's 'own power,' which is still something of a compliment. [sabrina: and this is particularly significant in regard to my dissertation...] wanting to be their own persons instead of adapting -- that was the problem posed by daughters to many parents, who sought to prepare them to be pliant wives. wanting to be one's own person -- that was ugly and dangerous. in their childhood memories women often relate how unnerved parents wanted to cure their small daughters of this desire for independence with brutal methods"
one of my favorite quotes: "where it [the independence] was broken, there remained a broken sensuality which no longer comprehended the whole person with intuition and understanding and became 'woman-specific'. it was said to create a sense of beauty, harmony, warmth and balance, yet it simply reflected the splitting of society into a private and a public sphere"

so much of this reminds me of the popular phrase in feminist dialogues: the personal is political. while it is true that this book is not the most recent work (published in 1995), this is the history (if not the present) of our society. these senses have been aligned with women and stripped of meaning or significance. so often, women's independence was taken and then remains a broken sensuality, a split individual and society.