[-empyre-] Intuition as sovereignty of the senses

[Ann Cvetkovich]

It’s already Thursday and I have so much to say!   I had thought I might post separately on each of our key words, but instead I will cut to the chase and say a few things about “intuition” as it connects to work I’ve been doing under the rubric of the “sovereignty of the senses” – work that began at Cornell when Sensation was the annual theme at the Society for the Humanities.  For me, the term is a way to describe forms of liberation (maybe “mystic liberation” to invoke the Age of Aquarius lyrics again?) that free body/mind/senses from the way they have been shaped by capitalism, racism, sexism and other forms of systemic oppression that are embedded in our sensory experiences, feelings, practices. " Sovereignty of the senses" invokes both Indigenous understandings of sovereignty that encompass the decolonization of mind and body – but it also carries with it Lauren Berlant’s notion of the non-sovereign as it pertains to the queer messiness of social relations – the ways that attention to felt experience takes us into the domain of falling apart, of not being in control.  

	I would suggest that practices and technologies of “intuition” are a forms of access to the sovereignty of the senses.  My own thinking has been deeply shaped by Indigenous and racialized understandings of sensation and feeling as guides to alternative ways of knowing; Dylan Robinson on “sensate sovereignty” -- and “hungry listening” as settler practice;  Gloria Anzaldua on la facultad; Jose Munoz on feeling/sensing brown; and Audre Lorde’s notion of “disciplined attention to the true meaning of ‘it feels right to me.’”  In a workshop with Black queer writer/performance artist Sharon Bridgforth, we were given the prompt:  “what is it you know you know but you tell yourself you don’t know?”  It is work to access “feeling” or “intuition” – not something that just comes naturally – and we need tools to help us!

	That’s the briefest of sketches … but I will just add that Jennifer’s post about touch confirms my “sense” that technologies (including art) for accessing intuition often involve the senses or embodied experience – whether the breathwork of meditation, the touching of the tarot cards, or the attention to the stars and moon in astrology (and walking practices).  I will hope to add one more post that addresses my relation to some of those practices – especially since they often linger in the shadows of my scholarly work – and this conversation seems like an invitation to bring them forward.

 
Ann Cvetkovich (she/hers)
www.anncvetkovich.com