Optical Sense

Caroline Jones's essay entitled "The Mediated Sensorium" discusses the various senses in relation to society as well as to each other, sight being at the top and the most imperative to this modernist world. According to Jones, "we should begin to reckon with the auditory, the olfactory, and the tactile as similarly crucial sites of embodied knowledge. The resulting set of experiences can be called a sensorium" (8). This means that each of the five senses produces knowledge and experiences for an individual, from which the sensorium is born, and he/she can coordinate them all as well as well as the self.

Through Jones's discussion of the optical, part of what struck me was the emphasis placed on that particular aspect of the sensorium, for it is something that is highly crucial to function and truly experience the world. Nevertheless, I kept thinking of those that are blind, or at least partially, and how that must affect their their sensorium. Even more, I have a friend who is color blind and cannot distinguish certain colors very well. He has to get his sister to help him pick out his clothes because the hues seem so different to him.

Jones further emphasizes the optical sense via "the privileging of painting at the time, and in [her] essay" (10). Those that are color blind, even partial to completely blind, are unfortunately at a loss when it comes to the sensorium and the possible experiences they can have. I am wondering how my friend is able to experience paintings, which are held in such a high regard as Jones points out in her essay.

Jones mentions Wittgenstein's famous theory, stating "I can never be certain that my "blue" is your "blue"; I can only persuade you to share a consensual language-game whose referents are sufficiently stable to function" (11). This is undoubtedly true, in that those whose senses "are sufficiently stable to function" may very well differ in experience, and even similar experiences such as the color blue can vary as well. Yet, for those whose referents do not function as well as others, there is a slight dislocation, and as a result, certain experiences are unfortunately lost within the sensorium. Playing the "consensual language-game" surrounding that particular facet of the sensorium becomes slightly more difficult for that person. Yet, the other senses take over as well, compensating for that which is lost.