'Empire of the Senses' charts the new terrains opened up by the sensual
revolution in scholarship, as it takes the reader into the sensory worlds of
the medieval witch and the postmodern mall, a Japanese tea ceremony and a
Boston shelter for the homeless.With groundbreaking contributions by Marshall McLuhan, Oliver Sacks, Italo
Calvino and Alain Corbin, among others, Empire of the Senses overturns
linguistic and textual models of interpretation and places sensory experience
at the forefront of cultural analysis. The senses are gateways of knowledge,
instruments of power, sources of pleasure and pain - and they are subject to
dramatically different constructions in different societies and periods. Empire
of the Senses charts the new terrains opened up by the sensual revolution in
scholarship, as it takes the reader into the sensory worlds of the medieval
witch and the postmodern mall, a Japanese tea ceremony and a Boston shelter for
the homeless. This compelling revisioning of history and cultural studies
sparkles with wit and insight and is destined to become a landmark in the
field.
