Why Synesthetics?

Synesthesia has been known to medical discourse for roughly 200 years.  The first known publication, written by Francis Galton, was published in 1880, though alternative accounts note medical references that date back as far as 1735 (Ramachandran & Hubbard, Castel).  Suggestions that interest synesthesia is a long spanning occurrence persists outside of medical discourse however, suggesting that sensory immersion and its effects on subjectivity is of continuing relevance to the field of philosophy and cultural theory.  John Harrison notes the history of references pertaining to the topic of synesthesia can be found to date back as far as 6th Century, BC, where suggestions of sensory synthesis can be found in the work of Pythagoras (Harrison).

   From a medico-scientific perspective, synesthesia has been historically difficult to study and thus difficult to legitimate due to the fact that its 'symptoms' are radically varied, difficult to quantify and difficult for patients to explain in any consistent 'objective' manner (Cytowic).  The reportedly highly subjective nature of synesthesia causes difficulty for medico-scientific frameworks discursively reliant on physiological empirical proof and thus, the subjective, metaphor heavy (and in many cases metaphor necessary) attempts to explain subjective synesthetic accounts according to a language structure incapable of supporting cross-modal descriptions of experience may explain the tendency for the occurrence of synesthesia to be historically medically and scientifically dismissed.  Nevertheless, synesthesia has encountered a renaissance in recent years, likely due to the advanced capacity of new technology for diagnostic purposes, along with attitude shifts regarding subjectivity and identity that have occurred in the last several decades.

   Synesthesia causes us to ask poignant questions about the nature of subjectivity and identity.  Synesthesia, as a neurological phenomenon, asks us to reconsider the ways in which we conceive of ourselves; our body and our subject, through senses.  Synesthesia challenges binary discourses of reason, and thus, challenges a multiplicity of binary structures that take legitimacy from the binary that places reason over emotion, for example, the binary that associates the masculine with reason, thereby oppressing the feminine according to the standards set by the reason/emotion structure.  Synesthesia forces us to face the stereotypes, boundaries and restrictions that we have been self-imposing and upholding through discursive construction and repetition for hundreds of years.  Using synesthetics; applying the theoretical challenge to writing and language that synesthesia presents, can help us to rethink, re-evaluate and rewrite personal expression in ways that relish in the multiple individual quirks of personal expression.

   Synesthesia is far more than a neurological condition, and more intensely experienced than an over-active imagination.  Synesthetics, inspired by synesthesia, give way to a multiplicity of ways in which we can extend and expand on what we think we know about language, and in turn, what we think of ourselves.  This is the basic principle upon which my honours thesis was founded, and it is the current that beats throughout all of my work.  The novel is a dying art if we cannot seek to make it more than what it has become.  This is the hope behind synesthetics.  To question and expand; to create/re-create out of the remnants of a dusty and tired literary tradition, something anew. 

This entry is titled, why synesthetics?  The answer is, why not?