Phenomenology and Tactile Memory: The Epistemology of Books

When this week’s topic was announced I genuinely gasped because as an academic books are sacrosanct. Furthermore, books have a larger connection to my research interest in the sensory. Books and print have a tactile quality that is innately related to learning. I would argue that this tactile quality is even more related to learning than the contents of said book.  One only has to think about how so many aspect of educational technology today lean heavily on touch. Material culture is a very complex and important part of pedagogy and my specific field, English literature.  However, what I constantly explore and evoke is the idea of touch as it relates to memory and in turn how it relates to the ability to learn or acquire knowledge.

This is where the rhizomatic comes in. There is something to be said about how tactile memory is part of the learning process.  Maurice Merleau-Ponty and other phenomenologist have posited how the sensory experience is related to the epistemological. We know things because we sense, because of experience and this in turn creates connections to previously registered knowledge. Touch and the sensory create and foster roots. From a purely tactile point of view then books can never really make us stupid. They are the keepers of experience and the keepers of memory. By interacting with a book, by touching it, we are creating knowledge registers and context. I know this is looking at books from a somewhat purely material aspect, books as place holders instead of books as warehouses of content. 

When looking from the aspect of content, I can see where arguments for the definite in print could negate the participatory and the rhizomatic in learning. There is also a tendency towards linearity in the written word that often impedes learning and exploration (except of course in those choose your own adventure books). A true liberal arts education (oh oh rabbit hole alert) must, in my opinion, contain levels of the Socratic method. There is really something to be said about deliberation and learning by sharing and building ideas and thoughts orality. I have these moments (the “ah ha!” moments as I like to call them) with my honours thesis students regularly when they come in to discuss aspects of their research. These are necessary moments and form part of an ethical collaborative pedagogical strategy.

So are books making us stupid (sorry English teacher- I refuse to make an intentional grammatical error)? If we let content dictate over form then yes there is an argument to be made about being slaves to type.  However, if we promote both form and content as valuable and equal aspects to the learning experience, we can foster a collaborative dialogue, an exciting way to think about experience in relation to epistemology, and more importantly find a way to tap into the power of tactile memory to allow us to grow as individuals.