The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

In The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram explores the relationship between language, perception, and environmental consciousness, integrating phenomenological theory with Indigenous perspectives on the potency of language. This examination posits that language and perception are foundational to constructing reality and mediating human interactions with the environment. For many Indigenous cultures, language is not merely a tool for communication but a living force that actively participates in the world it describes. This perspective sees language as inseparable from the physical and spiritual realms, capable of influencing and being influenced by the environment and its nonhuman inhabitants. Words are often considered one with the things themselves, embodying the life force of what they name. This holistic view underscores a profound respect for the power of speech and the responsibility that comes with it to maintain harmony and balance within the web of relationships that constitute the world.

Similar to these Indigenous perspectives, Abram argues for the inherent animacy and agency within language. Abram suggests that the abstraction of language from its living, sensory origins parallels and perhaps precipitated Western estrangement from the animate earth. By drawing attention to how magicians, both modern entertainers and Indigenous sorcerers, manipulate the “malleable texture of perception” (5), Abram highlights the capacity of language to shape one’s experience of reality.