IMPOSSIBLE ART: SYNESTHESIA, SENSORY MIMESIS, AND THE EMERGENCE OF CROSS-MODAL WORKS OF MODERN ART AND LITERATURE

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the turn of the century fascination with synesthesia and efforts by Modernist artists and writers to produce cross-modal works that attempt to defy sensory boundaries. Works of impossible art are artistic and literary experiments with style and form that develop out of the realism and naturalism of the nineteenth century, to be sure; they are also conceived of by their creators as scientific experiments that test what is possible at the limits of perception. Accordingly, while my work is situated within the field of aesthetics, I take a neuroscientific approach to aid in understanding the modes of perception these works are attempting to explore. My project applies the findings of recent neuroscientific studies into clinical synesthesia as a guide for thinking about these Modernist works. The methodology of neuro-aesthetics allows me to develop a theory of sensory mimesis. Sensory mimesis is a holistic approach to explaining phenomenological experience that depends on a sensory semantics, more fundamental and more comprehensive than a linguistic semantics, that I propose filters our access to the world. What we ultimately learn from impossible art is that the range of neurodiversity in humans is broader than we tend acknowledge or appreciate. The notoriously indefinable and uncategorizable character of queer theory is an applicable framework to match the innumerable neurocognitive possibilities that are actually available. To this end, my dissertation suggests that a shift to a neuro-queer-aesthetic paradigm would not only expand human perceptive possibilities, but also enable compassionate engagement within and among our diverse communities.