| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 英文學系碩士班 === 102 === This thesis explores the idea of sensory deprivation, the withdrawal of external stimuli, in relation to issues raised concerning altered states of being and ontological differences evident in a subject’s resultant condition and orientation while undergoing this process. The purpose of the thesis is to develop a general idea of boundary knowledge of sensory deprivation, including sensorial distortion and overload. In order to provide a comprehensive significance of the idea of sensory deprivation, the range of this investigation extends from philosophical and literary discourse to the study of cultural phenomena.
By reconsidering Deleuze’s body theory, which builds upon ideas from Nietzsche and Spinoza, Chapter Two examines Nietzsche’s ideas of reactive force and Spinoza’s idea of passive affection as a fundamental basis for revealing the world and judging reception at the first stage. Toward the clarification of a boundary knowledge of sensory deprivation, both Spinoza’s and Nietzsche’s ideas are shown to indicate the starting point of human sensation in the reactive and passive stage. Deleuze’s pessimistic view is also situated within the discourse. This approach offers a first step in understanding how knowledge of sensory deprivation begins to unveil itself in exploring phenomena such as sensory distortion, sensory overload and altered states of being.
Chapter Three applies the idea of corporeality into three directions: literary geography, restricted environmental studies, and science fiction. It first situates the idea of corporeality by applying Lefebvre’s space theory and Allen Ginsberg’s revolutionary poetic space, then invoking John Lily’s description of the floatation tank in response to the significance of restricted environmental studies. At last, in the discussion of science fiction, corporeality broadens its implication toward creating a new organ of perception where new sensations are born, in mutual cooperation with cultural material in the process of the symbiogenesis of sensation.
Chapter Four deals with the two major human sensations: visual and auditory perception in the discussion of image of film and sound of music. The effect of sensory distortion is compared to the affect of an image, revealing the temporal impersonal affect reducing or effacing the regime of signifying system. In addition, discussion of the film Taxidermia explores its unique shifting masculine affect. In the section discussing auditory perception in sensory overload, noise music and its relation in sadomasochism are examined in terms of the sublime, the process of sound machine, and the fetish inclination of sadomasochism.
In order to unveil the secret bond of mind and body, sensory deprivation is an important approach to gain access to what we call corporeality, and altered states of being into social practices. The complex dynamic of sensory deprivation manifested by the human sensation and social practices instantiates the mechanisms of human behavioral conditioning, and the overwhelming sensational-related political, social propaganda and custom, all of which determine the limitation and the transgression of human activity where subjectification and human perception are entwined to form an alternative state of being through the underlying dynamism of sensory deprivation.
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