Sensing Divergence
Presently, visual illusions in optical illusions or ink blots have been popularized through their use of color, light, and patterns to create images that can be deceptive or misleading to our brains. However, as diverting and entertaining these visual illusions may be, these visual perceptions have been characterized and hypothesized as universal, yet have proven to have culturally relative expressions under the works of Hudson and Rivers’ expedition to the Torres Strait. For months, the team tested vision, sight, and different senses to confirm whether there was a parallel between a primitive civilization cultural group and primitive mental functions. At the time, anthropologists (Spencerian perspective) perceived that less sophisticated primitives would exhibit higher sensory processes, visual acuity, and more senses to different smells and colors using fewer words, while also discussing different philosophical theories of existential thoughts. Hudson and Rivers’ observed bodily functions and sensory processes to discover whether there were various methods to perceive stimuli if you were more primitive or whether the primitive mind interprets stimuli the same as a European mind.
Their experiment consisted of two illiterate populations of European and Torres Strait Islanders and uncovered that these universal evolutionary trends in visual acuity displayed no correlation to the level of primitiveness. In fact, their results showed that there was even less sensitivity to visual illusions in the Torres Strait groups. For instance, there was no native term of “blue” or even an overall diminished color vocabulary. Hence, Hudson and Rivers’ learned that the more nuanced and more salient an object is enclosed under cultures, the more likely there will be more terms and descriptions a culture may have, proving to be subject to learned behaviors and cultural context.
Furthermore, the Oedipus complex is composed of psychosexual development: a stage in pre-puberty where the superego starts developing, highlighting social and cultural processes. Bronislaw Malinowski studied the Oedipus complex and introduced a functionalist perspective (fulfilling functions of our human needs such as safety, nourishment, love) on family structures wondering whether it would apply as universal. He argued that different psychological complexes would vary based on the different needs and organization of families. Therefore, Malinowski observed families of the New Guinea Trobriand Islander islands, consisting of unique families structures and behaviors. Through participant-observation, Malinowski challenged the Freudian perspective of how families were structured to have a father disciplinarian, and a nurturing mother who would eventually cut off the child as he/she reached maturation.
He discovered that the child wasn’t cut off from the mother’s nurturing and the father was a loving friend. Their free expression of sexual impulses made Malinowski question whether the repression of sexual impulses defines one’s superego. Rebecca Tsosie also highlights this concern through the impact of Indigenous people’s lives mentioning how, “cultural constructions of the past continue to inform Western law and policy and are profoundly linked to both testimonial and hermeneutical forms of epistemic injustice” (Tsosie, 2018, p. 356). Universal beliefs have shaped this “epistemic injustice” today, obscuring today’s culturally relative expressions.
