the salience of place more-than-human voices in the geographies of humans with tourette syndrome...
TRANSCRIPT
The Salience of PlaceMore-than-human voices
in the geographies of humans with Tourette syndrome
Diana Beljaars, Cardiff UniversityJon Anderson, Cardiff University
Spaces of Attunement 31/03/2015
Where we are influences who we are, and what we understand of the world
Edward Said (1993:7): “Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography”
People with Tourette syndrome as hypersensitive/hyperattuned
Humans with amplified sensations in relation to place
Individuals who can demonstrate the influence that place can have on human behaviour/ experience/ wellbeing
Place Salience
Place salience might be understood as the way in which a change of environment (or a geographical location itself) demands something of a person residing in it, thereby going beyond its mere meaning, and extending into the realms of the sensual and emotional experience of a place.
Assemblages
Assemblages can be thought of as wholes whose properties emerge from the interactions between the parts
Connections are forged between certain aspects of places and certain aspects of people that only become active in one particular person-place assemblage.
Assemblage brings out a set of capacities in both person and place; a set that is inherently open to change over time
Attentiveness (Seamon, 1976)Attunements to the environment can be located on an ‘awareness continuum’
From ‘person-place mergence’ to ‘person-place separateness’
Tourette’s as a person-place assemblage of attentiveness
behaviours are the consequences of bodily discomfort induced by extraordinary processes of perception that result in heightened sensitivity to place
requires time and effort to render person-place assemblages as ‘just right’.
When the place appearance shows discrepancies with the imagined place logic…
…and the place therefore requires more attention…
…and the senses are pressured…
…and the number of compulsive behaviours that have to be performed increases…
In Tourette syndrome
...then the place becomes more salient.
… and the person-place assemblage is a disruptive one and does not sustain the person thriving…
The Brenda Story (1)
Hyperattentiveness as indication of emerging social, cultural, material, non-human and embodied aspects of place with the changing place appearance
The Brenda Story (2)
Conclusions
Attunement to Place Salience:• How aspects of both people and place
emerge in the fluid process of place-making that supports or disrupts life to various extents.
• Understanding aspects of a person in laboratory conditions (e.g. for TS) only says something about that particular assemblage
• Place salience helps us understand how people and place connect and how aspects of one reflects and brings out aspects in the other.
