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The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World Paperback – February 25, 1997

by David Abram (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 678 ratings
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Winner of the International Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction

Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this intellectual tour de force that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us. This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception.

For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth? 

In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    368 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Vintage
  4. Publication date
    February 25, 1997
  5. Dimensions
    5.11 x 0.75 x 7.98 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0679776397
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0679776390
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

David Abram's writing casts a spell of its own as he weaves the reader through a meticulously researched work that gently addresses such seemingly daunting topics as where the past and future exist, the relationship between space and time, and how the written word serves to sever humans from their primordial source of sustenance: the earth.

"Only as the written text began to speak would the voices of the forest, and of the river, begin to fade. And only then would language loosen its ancient associations with the invisible breath, the spirit sever itself from the wind, the psyche dissociate itself from the environing air," writes Abram of the separation caused by the proliferation of the written word.

In writing The Spell of the Sensuous, Abram consulted an engaging collection of peoples and works. He uses aboriginal song lines, stories from the Koyukon people of northwestern Alaska, the philosophy of phenomenology, and the speeches of Socrates to paint a poetic landscape that explains how we became separated from the earth in the first place. With minimal environmental doomsaying, Abram discusses how we can begin to recover a sustainable relationship with the earth and the nonhuman beings who live among us--in the more-than-human world. --Kathryn True

Review

Long-awaited, revolutionary... This book ponders the violent disconnection of the body from the natural world and what this means about how we live and die in it. -- Los Angeles Times

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; First Edition (February 25, 1997)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0679776397
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679776390
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.11 x 0.75 x 7.98 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 678 ratings

About the author

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David Abram

David Abram

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David Abram, cultural ecologist and geophilosopher, is the author of The Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, among other works. Described as "revolutionary" by the Los Angeles Times, as “daring” and “truly original” by the journal Science, David's work explores the ecological depths of experience, articulating the ways in which sensory perception, language, and wonder inform the relation between the human animal and the animate earth. In The Spell of the Sensuous, David coined the phrase "the more-than-human world" in order to speak of nature as a realm that thoroughly includes humankind (with all our culture and artifice), yet necessarily exceeds humankind; the phrase has now been taken up as a key term within the worldwide movement for ecological sanity. Abram has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the international Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction, and has held the international Arne Naess Chair in Global Justice and Ecology in Norway. David is co-founder of the Alliance for Wild Ethics (AWE), and a distinguished Fellow of Schumacher College in England; he lives with his family in the foothills of the southern Rockies.

Dr. Abram was perhaps the first contemporary philosopher to advocate for a reappraisal of "animism" as a complexly nuanced and uniquely viable worldview, one which roots human cognition in the dynamic sentience of the body while affirming the ongoing entanglement of our bodied intelligence with the uncanny sentience of other animals. A close student of the traditional ecological knowledge of diverse indigenous peoples, his work also articulates the entwinement of human subjectivity with the varied sensitivities of the plants upon whom we depend, as well as with the agency of the particular places (or bioregions) that surround and sustain our communities. Our unique modalities of mind, Abram suggests, simply cannot be understood in isolation from the material dynamism and fragility of the breathing Earth.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
678 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Michael
5.0 out of 5 stars One Key Idea: We are only human as we engage with the "Other-Than-Human". I
Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2018
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I have long loved this book. I had occasion to recommend it again, and also have a moment to write a note about it... a rare synchronicity! So this: The few other reviews do a great job of describing the framework of relationship of the human to 'other-than-human' as exemplified in the evolution of increasingly complex abstractions of our communication systems, from pictograph to alphabet. From representation to communication by agreement that a symbol, and its related sounds mean a thing.
What is passed over is the weaving of the story between the technical and the experienced. So I introduced the book thusly:

It is an interesting book that weaves two stories together.. One of the experienced, "Other-Than-Human" world - of all types, from animal to insect, and charting the path of the human communication from the pictorial representation of the world as experienced, to the abstractions that make up the alphabet and the dictionary of words. Most of which have little direct association w the thing they are describing. In that movement of what might be called sophistication, he posits that our human experience has become increasingly split off from the rest of the world as our filter of engagement & experiences with the Other World(s) is increasingly via the cognitive & descriptive and less of the wordless, amazed, truly "awe-some" experience. I know I feel this lack.
It is split that creates so many of the large and complex problems we are dealing with today. We tend to think we understand the systems we are sometimes rather slapdashedly mucking around with... We do not. What we do not typically reckon with is how integrated life is. And that it is more than a hallmark card, or a sappy new age chant to say that everything is connected to everything...Not knowing this is central to what we call "unintended consequences", but really are more accurately "unconscious consequences". While we have also gained some learning and benefit from our reductionist science, there is no doubt of that... if we do not heed the opening introduction of this book, and its basic prescription for our consideration : That to be human... a vital, life living , life supporting person/life force we Must have some meaningful relationship with the Other-Than-Human.

For other books that work out that thesis in fact if not directly I'd suggest The Elephant Whisperer, and related books. And almost anything by Carl Safina. Especially "Song of the Blue Ocean".
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Bugs
5.0 out of 5 stars Disconnect and Loss of Empathy For Nature
Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2005
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This is one of the most scholarly treatments of the of human disconnect from Nature I have read. From early indigenous peoples to Socrates and beyond, Abrams takes us on a journey in time to find where the disconnect from Nature begins and spells it out not only in terms of the first "civilized" humans, but also how language began to sophisticate, yet distance itself and us from that part of Nature reality or "life-world" when we knew where our sustenance and life support came from and we had a more direct and reverent sensibility of it.

Realizing the dynamics of the disconnection leads us back to the reconnection and is seen in many passages throughout this book such as: "SO THE RECUPERATION OF THE INCARNATE, SENSORIAL DIMENSION of experience brings with it a recuperation of the living landscape in which we are corporeally embedded. As we return to our senses, we gradually discover our sensory perceptions to be simply our part of a vast, interpenetrating webwork of perceptions and sensations borne by countless other bodies- supported that is, not just by ourselves, but by icy streams tumbling down granitic slopes, by owl wings and lichens, and by the unseen, imperturbable wind." (p 65)

"The earthly terrain in which we find ourselves, and upon which we depend for all our nourishment, is shot through with suggestive scrawls and traces, from the sinuous calligraphy of rivers winding across the land, inscribing arroyos and canyons into the parched earth of the desert, to the black slash burned by lightning into the trunk of an old elm." (p 95)

"THE SENSE OF BEING IMMERSED IN A SENTIENT WORLD IS preserved in the oral stories and songs of indigenous peoples- in the belief that sensible phenomena are all alive and aware, in the assumption that all things have the capacity of speech. Language, for oral peoples, is not a human invention but a gift from the land itself." (p 262-3)

This beautiful book is full of such passages and I keep it handy for continuous reference and enjoyment- it is one of the most marked-up and highlighted books in my possession. Thank you David Abrams!
17 people found this helpful
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Somnia
5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you for a beautiful book, came before Christmas which was amazing!
Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2023
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The book is great and the seller shipped it to me very fast to arrive before Christmas!
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Chester
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent brain stretch!
Reviewed in Canada on March 1, 2023
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Very much enjoying this fascinating book!
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Ana Hoepfner
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente, ameno y con enorme cantidad de informacion
Reviewed in Mexico on March 26, 2022
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Lo he leido y compartido, he regalado 6 y a todos Les encanta
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Sarah Joiner
5.0 out of 5 stars Not an eay read - but all the better for that.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 10, 2023
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This book has a lot of big words and quite a lot of repetition. However, the theory david Abram propounds is highly original. it doesnt talk down to the reader, is probably taken from his master thesis.
It is an in depth descrition of the state humanity has found itself in, from a really unusual perspective.
The natural language of the Earth arround us, and the way indigenous languages have always spoken from within their relationship with the specifics of locaction is something he experienced firsthand. He traces how we have lost that connection, as our language has used artificial means through which to communicate. he traced the breath based script of Hebrew, and later developments, so the point where modern humans so often communicate via entirely electronic medium, and the dire effects this has had, in terms of disconnect from the natural world. We forget that our existence is housed in an "animal" body. Afascinating read.
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Fedtke, Caterina
5.0 out of 5 stars Super Buch auch für die heutige Zeit!
Reviewed in Germany on December 29, 2021
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Sehr gute Analyse von der Beziehung des Menschen zur Natur.
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Robert D. Hale
4.0 out of 5 stars Important, eye-opening, thought-provoking... but prolix
Reviewed in Spain on November 29, 2021
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This is an important, possibly vitally important work. It is eye-opening and thought-provoking. The author's main theme - the intimacy with nature experienced by preliterate societies and its loss in literate ones - is nigh impossible effectively to convey in words, especially the written word (as emphasised by the author), or even to oneself in thought, as the moment one tries to do so the matter abstracts itself from that which is experienced. The author makes valient efforts and the reader does get from this an intellectual understanding of his proposition. But he uses far too many words, repeats himself endlessly (and without much variety in expression). A book a third of the length would have been more elegant, more effective, better. In his postscript to this twentieth anniversary edition, the author seems a little too assured of the noteworthiness and literary merit of his work. But read my first sentence again, then read the book.
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