The body beyond the face: rethinking multispecies connections through sensory ethnography

Abstract

Focusing on the body beyond the face allows multispecies anthropology to embrace a multisensory perspective, opening new possibilities for detecting and understanding the subtleties of interspecies connectedness. The body, transcending any single sense, reveals its multisensorial potentialities: touch evokes emotions, sight inspires visions, hearing deepens into attentive listening, taste fosters companionship, and smell rekindles memories. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s views on the body and my ethnographic work with pigeons and donkeys in Pakistan, this article contends that a bodily oriented, sense-based approach has the potential to generate new forms of knowledge and reimagine relationships that transcend species boundaries.