In defense of materiality: Attending to the sensori-social life of things

Abstract

This article presents a defense of the concept of materiality in the face of Tim Ingold’s critique of the concept as part of his “efforts to restore anthropology to life” in Being Alive and elsewhere. While acknowledging the forcefulness of Ingold’s stress on the “liveliness” of materials, and doctrine of perception “as action” (not representation), it critiques the way he neuters the perceiving subject, abstracts the senses, disregards the sensuous pleasures of making, and elides the sensori-social life of things. Three case studies are presented by way of illustration: the sensorial archaeology of perception, the “exuberant materiality” of the Byzantine bas-relief metal icon, and the tactility of “ladies’ craftwork” in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. In place of Ingold’s ideal-typical figures – the rootless wayfarer, the skilled craftsman – this article brings out the situatedness of the human subject within a particular tradition, or sensory and social regime, and how this mediates their construction and perception of things and other persons.