The Menagerie of the Senses

ABSTRACT

The term “menagerie” convenes two claims: firstly that our relation to our senses is one of active and constructive management (the old sense of the word “menagerie”), and that animal senses, or our idea of them, play an indispensable part in that management of the senses. While our senses mediate the world to us, animals mediate our senses to us; animals are thus the mediators of the mediation. A review of the use of animals as emblems of the five senses in medieval and early modern illustrations shows that while, on the one hand, animals were used to enforce the idea of the lowliness of the senses, on the other hand, the awareness of the superiority of certain animal senses encouraged the imaginative recruitment of animals to augment or transform human powers. This is brought to a focus in representations of the fly. Finally, this essay considers the part played by simulations of animal perception in the development of new technologies for augmenting and extending human senses. The new organs, perceptions and forms of awareness of our world continue to implicate and improvise upon the animals, which helps us to take leave of our senses.