Francesco Parisi
in NODES 27 → 2026
https://doi.org/10.57633/NODES-27/1-ENG
This paper advances a thesis on the effects of contemporary media on human cognition, arguing that current media conditions induce two complementary states of sensorimotor adaptation: anaesthesia and hyperaesthesia. Drawing on the enactivist framework of embodied cognition, the paper grounds both phenomena in the structural separation between perception and action that characterizes contemporary ecomedial environments. Anaesthesia is understood as progressive desensitization to perceptual stimuli: the sensorium is hyperstimulated while the possibilities for motor response diminish. Hyperaesthesia, instead, is understood as an excess of agentive, emotional, and existential reaction and constitutes the outcome of temporal collapse induced by the media proliferation of possible futures. Rather than treating these two phenomena as dysfunctional, the paper proposes that anaesthesia and hyperaesthesia constitute propaedeutic strategies of sensorimotor adaptation. Anaesthesia and hyperaesthesia can lead to dysfunctional behaviors, but can also prepare the ground for renewed and more controlled forms of agency across multiple planes of reality.
To cite this article: Parisi, F. (2026). Anaesthesia and Hyperaesthesia. When Perception Exceeds Action. Nodes (27):20-27, Numero Cromatico Editore, Roma