Introduction

While the senses are the means by which the human body perceives and responds to the material world, the critical nexus they form around material culture has to be described and, following on from that, its impact for museological practices assessed. It was with this position in mind that the symposium "Engaging All the Senses: colonialism, processes of perception and material objects" was convened. Objects become sensible when they are embedded in a discourse which links things available as discrete entities to the senses, to the physicality of concrete existence in the phenomenologically experienced world, and to ways of thinking about the world in which the senses constitute material objects as a series of fluid markers, designs, desires, and energies. Thinking through objects with the senses also reengages with objects at a very profound level. To dignify and engage with the subjective experience of the senses is not to deny reality nor is it a return to fetishism or romanticism.