The Senses and Civilization

2019 ◽  
pp. 14-46
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Rotter
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
The Senses

This chapter introduces the idea of how the senses were important to Britons arriving in India and Americans arriving in the Philippines. It provides examples of reactions in terms of sensual responses to illustrate this. British and American senses told them many things about their hosts. Indians and Filipinos were, they believed, different from themselves, or, in other words, fundamentally Other. The chapter asks what this Other was to the new arrivals. Violations of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste represented to the westerners a lack of refinement and decency in those they encountered. They construed difference in several ways, but most of all as racial ones. They recoiled in fear and sought to distance themselves from those whose habits reflected their crudeness and terrified them so.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 264-288
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Rotter
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Senses

This chapter asks: how does a nation leave its imperial possessions when the period of empire ends? There are complicated logistics involved in this. The main focus of the conclusion is what happens when the conquerors leave the conquered—in other words, when empire is over. It gives an historical account of how independence occurred in each of the two countries, and relates the history of the end to the senses. The end of empire in India and the Philippines brought changes to the Britons and Americans that were in their own ways as profound as those felt by its subjects.

Touching, Feeling, and Healing

2019 ◽  
pp. 187-232
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Rotter
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
The Body ◽  
The People ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Being Moved

This chapter considers touch in empire: it asks us to imagine how the body would feel being moved to a completely new environment. Hapticity, the chapter argues, is both the pauper and king of the senses. It is generally relegated to the realm of the lower senses, beneath even smell and taste. Conversely, touch can also be seen as the most powerful of the senses. It was of great importance in medieval Europe, for example. The metaphors used to describe empire were frequently haptic. The chapter also looks at how the Britons and Americans in India and the Philippines wanted to change the people they encountered. Health was a great motivator in this desire.

scholarly journals Sex in Asian Cinema

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hai Leong Toh
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Public ◽  
True Story ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Film Productions ◽  
Asian Cinema

IN JAPAN, the euphemistic term for the sex cinema is "pink films" (pinku-eiga) or "roman poruno" (romance pornography) while the Filipinos call it "bomba". In pre-and-post-1997 Hong Kong, sex films are rated and popularly known as Category III (adult audience only). No matter how sex films are termed, this genre still raises a lot of ire, from the censors as well as from the public. Last year, many film productions in the Philippines were suspended for fear of more censorship. The promise of naked flesh and the chimera of sexual release has always made the appetite for this genre insatiable. Yet the more interesting films have posed complex emotional, psychological and existential questions. For instance, the male fear of emasculation was seen in the breakthrough "hardcore" sex film, Nagisa Oshima's Ai no corrida (In The Realm Of The Senses, 1976), based on a true story in Tokyo in 1936,...

Empires of the Senses

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Rotter
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Sensory History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Senses ◽  
History Of Empire ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Order

This book offers a sensory history of the British in India from the formal imposition of their rule to its end and the Americans in the Philippines from annexation to independence. A social and cultural history of empire, it focuses on quotidian life. It analyzes how the senses created mutual impressions of the agents of imperialism and their subjects and highlights connections between apparently disparate items, including the lived experience of empire, the otherwise unremarkable comments (and complaints) found in memoirs and reports, the appearance of lepers, the sound of bells, the odor of excrement, the feel of cloth against skin, the first taste of a mango or meat spiced with cumin. Men and women in imperial India and the Philippines had different ideas from the start about what looked, sounded, smelled, felt, and tasted good or bad. Both the British and the Americans saw themselves as the civilizers of what they judged backward societies and believed that a vital part of the civilizing process was to put the senses in the right order of priority and to ensure them against offense or affront. People without manners who respected the senses lacked self-control; they were uncivilized and thus unfit for self-government. Societies that looked shabby, were noisy and smelly, felt wrong, and consumed unwholesome food in unmannerly ways were not prepared to form independent polities and stand on their own. It was the duty of allegedly more sensorily advanced westerners to put the senses right before withdrawing the most obvious manifestations of their power.

Governing

2019 ◽  
pp. 86-130
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Rotter
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
The People ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Different Response

This chapter explores the reactions of the senses once war has abated. It begins with an examination of sight. Once the period of war had ended in India and similarly in the Philippines, it asks, who were the people of India and the Philippines? How many of them were there? Where did they live? What did they look like? These were the questions the conquering Britons and Americans would have asked. The chapter comments on the “magic” witnessed in India by the British eyes: “jugglers,” as the British termed the people who displayed such magic. The chapter then goes on to describe the similar yet different response of the Americans to the Filipinos they encountered.

Fighting

2019 ◽  
pp. 47-85
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Rotter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Senses

This chapter focuses on the sensual response to violence in the first few years of empire in India and the Philippines. It outlines the history of how the British came to India in the mid-nineteenth century, and the Americans to the Philippines at the end of the century. It also shows how important a part violence and war played in the creation of these two empires. The chapter relates violence and rebellion to the senses of taste and sight. It examines the Great Rebellion in India (1857-58) and the American war in the Philippines (1898-1902), looking at their causes and consequences, and the first sensual sensory encounters in these places. The chapter also looks at how soundscapes can be changed by war.

Nourishing

2019 ◽  
pp. 233-263
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Rotter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Senses

This chapter argues that taste is in many respects the most malleable of all the senses. Food plays an important part in shaping new encounters of empire. Along with smell, taste is an intimate sense, one drawn deep into the body by its presence in the mouth and through the nose. It profoundly affected the perceptions of the Others encountered by Britons and Americans. Metaphors of empire were haptic, as the previous chapter argues, but many were also gustatory. This chapter looks at the tastes in Britain and the United States in the late nineteenth century and how they relate to empire in India and the Philippines.

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