Goosebumps, shivers, visualization, and embodied resonance in the reading experience: The God of Small Things

This article contributes to studies of the heuristic, metacognitive and social values of literary works by interrogating ways by which literary description can induce experiential involvement in the reading process through mobilizing what neuropsychologists call our “affective consciousness” (Vandekerckhove and Panksepp 2011: 2017): a form of pre-reflective reception that arises from bodily experience. Focusing upon Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, I propose a theoretical framework for interrogating the forms of priming, bias, and insight gained via these physical dimensions of reading. In particular, I examine a narrative technique I term “embodied anchors,” by which Roy conveys her characters' experiences, and their interpretations of those experiences, through image-clusters that function both as metaphors and as physical cues, simultaneously affecting both “basic” and “moral” emotions (as differentiated by clinical psychologists Olatunji and Moll 2007). I analyze how these embodied prompts activate readers' preconscious modes perception, modify cognitive skills, and intensify the effects of reading by anchoring ideational content in readers' bodies, rendering abstract concepts physically tangible, thus providing alternative and parallel means of communicating and manipulating knowledge. This knowledge, I argue, can be integrated into readers' range of experiences in ways that parallel 'real-life' encounters, potentially facilitating profound learning