ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a careful re/theorizing of the role of the sensory and performative body in knowledge construction and reproduction. In this process, it addresses the potential of sensoria-attentive research focused on narrated experiences, using an expanded conceptualization of discourse analysis that focuses on the senses for a critical heritage theory and practice. The chapter focuses on bodies of work that critically interrogate the relationships between memory, memory work, affect, emotion, subjectivities, and the material world in relation to ways of knowing that occur in the dialogical and slippery interface between the bodily and the cognitive. A polysensual approach thus centers on the dynamic relationship and also requires attention to culturally specific epistemological models for the senses and sensory experiences as well as differences between bodies in terms of affective capacities, both being phenomena not interrogated by Massumi. The polysensory construction of a heritage that hurts and as Landsberg proposes, the potential for producing both empathy and social transformation.
