David Howes: The Shifting Sensorium, Aisthesis and Hyperaesthesia

David Howes is a Canadian anthropologist and legal scholar. He is a Full Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Co-Director of the Centre for Sensory Studies at Concordia University, and an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law at McGill University. He has co-authored or edited 16 books, ranging from The Varieties of Sensory Experience (1991) to Sensorium (2024). Howes co-founded the journal The Senses and Society (with Michael Bull, Paul Gilroy and Doug Kahn) in 2006, and has served as general editor of the Sensory Formations book series (2003–2009) and the new Sensory Studies book series from Routledge (2015). Howes received a DLitt (his 6th degree) from Oxford University in 2025; he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2024; and awarded the title of Distinguished Research Professor by Concordia University in 2021.

A kaleidoscope

We open with origins because a whole way of seeing rarely arrives all at once, and sensory studies was never an obvious path to walk. The turns that shaped it reveal how the field took root in fieldwork rather than theory, and how a chance encounter can quietly redirect a life's inquiry.

ARTOEND: How did you arrive at the work you do today, was it a gradual path, or were there turning points?

David: My interest in exploring the varieties of sensory experience in history and across cultures was inspired by attending a talk by the communications guru, Marshall McLuhan, at the University of Toronto in 1979. A decade later, I went to Papua New Guinea (PNG) to try out his hypothesis that people in oral/aural societies (where speech is the dominant medium of communication) are more ear-minded than people in literate (writing-based, print-based) societies, with their more visual mindset. In PNG, I found that the senses are distinguished, valued and combined in myriad different ways. The idea that the invention of writing resulted in “the substitution of an eye for an ear” (McLuhan) is too simple. Rather, we should think of the sensorium as a kaleidoscope, where the senses (in place of colours and shapes) enter into all sorts of different configurations or mixes, such as the sweet colours and fragrant songs discussed by Constance Classen (1990) in her groundbreaking article on the “sensory orders” of the cultures of the Andes and the Amazon.

A second turning point came in the early 2000s, when my attention was drawn to the sensory logic of the consumer society, and the way it bombards us with sensory prompts in the interests of moving merchandise. Every commodity must have the right look, the right sound, the right feel, the right smell, etc.. The resulting regime of hyperaesthesia has a counterside, though, as exemplified by the invention of the iPod Touch, with its so-called touch interface, by Apple in 2007. The screens of such mobile devices are flat, being made of glass, and to activate them all you do is tap or swipe. This seemed to me to result in a diminution of tactility. (Compare the old rotary dial phone, the dial of which requires effort to manipulate, and also has a ring). Yet marketing professors marveled at the way Apple had come to "own touch” because the word "touch” is right there in the name of the device. Thus, Apple appropriated and streamlined our very touch, the most corporeal and intimate of the senses. Heaven help us!