Beyond a surface gaze: inscribing the sensory

Abstract

This article argues that memory, nostalgia, place and sensory experience are inter-related and should not be relegated to the background, as they are indicative and productive of genesis, structure and process of social relations and ideals. The text addresses challenges of writing a narrative that includes diverse representations of mutually experienced events that reverberate in different spaces of the post-colonial world. In the research described, ancestors and their descendants co-exist and work together to fashion family histories in various examples from Madagascar and the United States. Conversations in the field, remembered with the odors, textures, and sounds of intimate exchanges, exposed a tangible reality and pervasive nostalgia that is not knowable through colonial records or national archives.