With reference to Steven Feld’s “acoustemology,” his epistemology of sounding and listening, developed in the Bosavi Rainforest in Papua New Guinea, where the trees are too dense to afford a distant view and meaning has to be found up close, on the body with other human and more-than-human bodies, this essay deliberates how sound knows in entanglements and from the in-between: in a being with as a knowing with rather than from a distance. In this way, this essay, from (...) the densities of the rainforest, critiques Western knowledge and its reliance on visual categories, straight lines, and universalising principles that pretend objectivity and a distant view. Instead, it turns to the relational indivisibility of sound that lets us hear interdependencies and confronts us with the invisible of which we are part. In conclusion, it proposes that sound studies as applied, transversal studies enable such a paradigm shift that at once reveals what hegemonic knowledge strands exclude and invites a different dialogue from the in-between of everything. (shrink)

The results are presented of first-principles calculations of the structural, elastic and lattice dynamical properties of GdX (X ¼ Bi, Sb). In particular, the lattice parameters, bulk modulus, phonon dispersion curves, elastic constants and their related quantities, such as Young’s modulus, Shear modulus, Zener anisotropy factor, Poisson’s ratio, Kleinman parameter, and longitudinal, transverse and average sound velocities, were calculated and compared with available experimental and other theoretical data. The temperature and pressure variations of the volume, bulk modulus, thermal expansion (...) coefficient, heat capacities, Gru¨neisen parameter and Debye temperatures were predicted in wide pressure (050 GPa) and temperature ranges (0–500 K). The plane-wave pseudopotential approach to the density-functional theory within the GGA approximation implemented in VASP (Vienna ab initio simulation package) was used in all computations. (shrink)

Exploring a wide range of sonic practices, from birdsong in the Marshall Islands to Zulu ululation, the contributors reorient the field of sound studies toward the global South in order to rethink and decolonize modes of understanding and listening to sound.

Elliot Eisner notes, “The kinds of nets we know how to weave determine the kinds of nets we cast. These nets, in turn, determine the kinds of fish we catch.”1 Sound studies is a recently emerged interdisciplinary field that draws upon the social sciences and humanities in support of a broad range of inquiry into music and sound. Weaving new approaches that cast interesting questions that yield fascinating catches, sound studies has much to offer those (...) looking to expand or challenge their conceptions of music and sound—particularly educators who wish to hear the world anew while helping others to grow meaningfully with music. This article presents an overview of the field with particular attention to those actual... (shrink)

In this paper I put in dialogue two areas of scholarship: Technology Studies and Sound Studies. Within Technology Studies I discuss the influential social construction of technology approach and illustrate it with the history of the moog electronic music synthesizer, the first commercial music synthesizer. I stress the role of standardization of keyboards and the key role played by users in the development of this technology. I examine certain iconic sounds that the moog synthesizer produces and (...) discuss the stabilization of sound. It is argued that just as technologies can be traced as stabilizing over time, sounds also can be traced with certain sounds stabilizing and being taken up by users whilst other sounds fail to stabilize. The technology required to produce a sound, performance practice, and wider cultural concerns such as the naming of sounds are crucial ingredients in the stabilization of sound. (shrink)

Cette contribution revient sur le dialogue qui s’est développé depuis dix ans entre des chercheurs en Études théâtrales et des chercheurs en Sound Studies dans le cadre de deux projets successifs. Après avoir rappelé le contexte dans lequel a été élaborée la présente réflexion, précisé ce que j’entends ici par Sound Studies et donné quelques informations sur les Études théâtrales, je montrerai comment la relation intense que les secondes ont entretenue avec les premières a contribué à (...) l’élaboration d’une véritable réécriture de l’histoire du théâtre et comment les théâtrologues ont pu, en s’appuyant sur leur bases disciplinaires propres, opposer des approches critiques au modèle des Sound Students. (shrink)

How is it possible for sounds to be sound? The evanescence of sounds seems to provide us with no more than a fragile foundation, even if echo and resonance offer fleeting extensions of sonic moments. Historians of the senses have told us that despite the importance of audition and orality in antiquity and the Middle Ages, modernity has privileged vision, and this predilection has accompanied and buttressed modern attempts in science and philosophy to provide a firm foundation for knowledge. (...) The development of sound studies in the last two or three decades has subtly—and progressively more explicitly—begun to propose a shift in how a foundation, a ground, could be conceived. What is the nature of this shift?We need... (shrink)

This article evaluates the theoretical and practical grounds of recent debates around Christoph Cox’s realist project of a ‘sonic materialism’ by returning to Gilles Deleuze, a key theoretical resource for Cox. It argues that a close engagement with Deleuze’s work in fact challenges many of the precepts of Cox’s sonic materialism, and suggests a rethinking of materialism in the context of music. Turning to some aspects of Deleuze’s work neglected by Cox, the ‘realist’ ontological inquiry Cox affirms is challenged through (...) the ‘onto-ethology’ that Deleuze and Félix Guattari develop in their A Thousand Plateaus, with this diversely constructive theory of relations explicated through musical examples from John Cage and Pauline Oliveros. To conclude, this article suggests that Deleuze can indeed be understood as subscribing to a materialism, but a materialism that is practical rather than doctrinal. (shrink)

This text departs from a contradictory claim in deaf studies and sound studies: both disciplines describe a hierarchical regime of the sensible – visuocentrism and audiocentrism – which they try to counter with conceptualisations as “acoustemology” or “deaf gain.” However, as we argue, they both thereby erect what they claim to overcome: a sensual regime that privileges one sense over another and a restricted conception of subjectivity deriving from it. First, we draw a philosophical line in the (...) critique of sensual regimes. Then we propose a figure for the transcendence of the separation of the sensible: in re-reading of the myth of Odysseus and the sirens, we engage various examples from literature, art, and acoustics to describe sirens as a mythological and technical archetype of the transcendence of the sensual regime, as well as reified subjectivity. The question, then, is not how to escape the sirens, but how they can be approached. It is necessary, we argue, for sound studies to develop a critical self-consciousness of its own restricted concepts in order to move from sonic thinking towards a sirenic thinking. (shrink)

Par l’attention qu’ils portent aux modalités sociales, économiques, politiques et culturelles – et non seulement techniques – de production du son, les travaux regroupés depuis une quinzaine d’année sous la dénomination de Sound Studies interrogent la pratique historienne dans ses hypothèses et dans la circonscription de son territoire. Alors qu’une partie des chercheurs issus de ce champ entend affranchir le sonore du musical, ce texte propose d’inverser la perspective et de mesurer l’apport de ces réflexions pour l’enquête historienne (...) consacrée aux sociabilités et aux circulations musicales. Musicologues entendant rompre avec une approche essentiellement internaliste de la partition musicale, historiens, acousticiens, ces chercheurs se sont attachés à des objets neufs et ont analysé les espaces sociaux à partir de problématiques renouvelées, impliquant une approche interdisciplinaire et une méthodologie croisant des expertises issues de champs variés. De l’historienne Emily Thompson, s’attachant à la construction scientifique des espaces sonores contemporains en lien avec l’architecture, au musicologue Jonathan Sterne, qui consacre une partie de ses travaux aux origine culturelles de la reproduction du son, toutes et tous considèrent que le sonore relève d’enjeux sociaux historicisés. Le concept même de « paysage sonore » mérite lui-aussi d’être questionné. S’attacher à une histoire du sonore conduit également à s’attacher à une histoire sociale de l’écoute que l’historien aura tout intérêt à croiser avec des approches d’acoustique musicale. Enfin, le champ des Sound Studies invite à une réflexion critique sur le processus de construction de l’archive sonore, en articulant l’apport des Sciences and Technology Studies consacrées à la (re)production du son à l’outillage propre à l’enquête historique à partir des témoignages sonores du passé, dans le sillage de la « phonographie documentaire ». (shrink)

In the last two centuries, our world would have been a safer place if philosophers such as Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche had not given intellectual encouragement to the radical ideologies of Jacobins, Stalinists, and fascists. Maybe the world would have been better off, from the standpoint of sound practice, if philosophers had engaged in only modest, decent theory, as did John Stuart Mill. Yet, as Ronald Beiner contends, the point of theory is not to think safe thoughts; the point (...) is to open intellectual horizons. In Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit, Beiner reflects on the dualism of theory and practice. The purpose of the theorist is not to offer sensible guidance on the conduct of social life but to test the boundaries of our vision of social order. Whereas the liberal citizen should embody the practical virtues of prudence and moderation, the theorist should be radical, probing, and immoderate. Looking back at the liberal-communitarian debate of the 1980s, Beiner recognizes that the antidote to our spiritless times lies neither in the embrace of community over individualism nor of individualism over community: both individual and community need to be submitted to radical questioning. It is by exposing ourselves to the challenge of fearless thinking encountered at the philosophical extremities that we are most likely to understand our own world at a deeper level. In this collection of essays and reviews, Ronald Beiner helps us to think critically about the thought-worlds of our foremost contemporary thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, Allan Bloom, Michel Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer, J¦rgen Habermas, Will Kymlicka, Christopher Lasch, Richard Rorty, Judith Shklar, Leo Strauss, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer. (shrink)

A discussion of the topics of curation, geography, and material production in the context of sound studies and the sonic world.

This is not a book about sound. It is a study of sounds that aims to write the resonance and response they call for. John Mowitt seeks to critique existing models in the expanding field of sound studies and draw attention to sound as an object of study that solicits a humanistic approach encompassing many types of sounds, not just readily classified examples such as speech, music, industrial sounds, or codified signals. Mowitt is particularly interested in (...) the fact that beyond hearing and listening we 'audit' sounds and do so by drawing on paradigms of thought not easily accommodated within the concept of 'sound studies.' To draw attention to the ways in which sounds often are not perceived for the social and political functions they serve, each chapter presents a culturally resonant sound--including a whistle, an echo, a gasp, and silence--to show how sounds enable critical social and political concepts such as dialog, privacy, memory, social order, and art-making. Sounds : The Ambient Humanities significantly engages, provokes, and contributes to the dynamic field and inquiry of sound studies"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Building on Philip Tagg’s timely intervention (2011), I investigate four things in relation to three dominant Anglophone popular music studies journals (Popular Music and Society, Popular Music, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies): 1) what interdisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity means within popular music studies, with a particular focus on the sites of research and the place of ethnographic and/or anthropological approaches; 2) the extent to which popular music studies has developed canonic scholarship, and the citation tendencies (...) present within scholarship on both Western and non-Western popular musics; 3) the motivations for two scholarly groups, Dancecult and ASARP, to breakaway from popular music studies; 4) the forms of music analysis and the kinds of musical material commonly employed within popular music studies. I suggest that the field would greatly benefit from a true engagement with anthropological theories and methods, and that the “chaotic conceptualization” of musical structuration and the critical discourse would likewise benefit from an attention to recorded sound and production aesthetics. (shrink)

This study aims to decode the hemodynamic responses evoked by multiple sound-categories using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. The six different sounds were given as stimuli. The oxy-hemoglobin concentration changes are measured in both hemispheres of the auditory cortex while 18 healthy subjects listen to 10-s blocks of six sound-categories. Long short-term memory networks were used as a classifier. The classification accuracy was 20.38 ± 4.63% with six class classification. Though LSTM networks’ performance was a little higher than chance levels, (...) it is noteworthy that we could classify the data subject-wise without feature selections. (shrink)

Music is said to consist of melody, rhythm, and harmony. Sound is assumed to be something that automatically follows once musical structure is determined. Sound, which is what actually impinges on our eardrums, has been so long forgotten in the history of musical theory. It is ironic that we do not talk about the music which we hear every day but rather are exclusively concerned about the abstracted structure behind it. This is a legacy of ancient Greek ideas (...) about music, which most contemporary musical discourses are based on. Under this tradition, imperceptible music has priority over perceptible music in reality. On the contrary, music was explained in the framework of sound, tone, and music in ancient China. Although different thinkers tried to define music in a variety of ways, sound was never completely expelled from their musical theorizations. On one hand, music was regarded as a continuum of sound and tone, namely, perceptible music and intelligible music in its structure. On the other hand, music was considered as something that could not be reduced to its structure or notation but could be associated with much broader contexts. This article explores two different traditions in ancient Greece and China in terms of their musical ontology. By answering the question, “What is music as such?” differently, they developed different views on issues such as the relationship of music and emotion, the role of music in society, the symbolization of music, and so on. (shrink)

A culturally diverse historical record shows considerable evidence of a significant role for musical sound in healing processes. Very little of this information is used in contemporary medical practice. In part that is a function of paradoxical, inconclusive, and sometimes contradictory research results. Reviewed research literature is categorized as follows: physical healing, psychological healing, spiritual healing, and healing practices of indigenous peoples. The combination of ethnographic, descriptive and clinical data in the literature review demonstrates the complexity inherent to investigating (...) this topic. Most of the clinical research uses quantitative methodologies. Because of the diversity of musical sound, infinitely variable individual responsivity, and the variable significance of a variety of influences, quantitative studies about musical sound healing phenomena are only minimally revealing. It is suggested that whether or not a sound facilitates a healing response depends on how it is experienced. Further, how this happens as well as the distinction between sound and music is in large part a function of the meaning sound is given. This is the first study to examine in detail the meaning of such an experience. This study uses the phenomenological methodology developed by Giorgi to analyze four descriptive protocols detailing first-person responses to a question about musical sound-facilitated physical healing processes. The analysis results in a single general structure of the essential meaning of this experience revealing the relationships for each subject connecting an altered state of consciousness , spiritual awareness, cognitive understanding, history of related experiences and active, intentional choice. Despite their apparent individual differences all subjects used musical sound in ritualistic ways to facilitate an ASC which incorporated visual imagery and spiritual support. Half the subjects used music and sound for themselves, the other half participated in a sound-based ritual for the benefit of someone else. A phenomenological approach further provides a way to demonstrate the subtle interrelationships expressed by the ethnographic, descriptive and clinical data. Broad implications of the results of this study are discussed concluding with some directions for further research and a brief discussion on the value of a phenomenological approach to medical diagnosis and treatment. (shrink)

Rendell and Whitehead's thorough review dispels notions that culture is an exclusive faculty of humans and higher primates. We applaud the authors, but differ with them regarding the evolution of cetacean culture, which we argue resulted from the availability of abundant but spatially and temporally patchy prey such as schooling fish. We propose two examples of gene-culture coevolution: (1) acoustic abilities and acoustic traditions, and (2) transmission of environmental information and longevity.

One of Guattari's most important conceptual contributions is his notion of transversality. This complex notion responds to the very concrete problem that, when we oppose certain power formations, we tend to reproduce these same power formations. This article proposes an examination of Guattari's concept of transversality through five of its aspects, which will be related to the various problematics they respond to. The aim is to show how power formations operate and how transversality responds to them, and also to highlight (...) the primordial importance of practical and political issues to Guattari's conceptual work. As we will see, Guattari conceived of transversality in relation to the Leninist cut; it thus is linked to democratic centralism and to the subject-group. Transversality is also linked to enunciation and autopoiesis; it is characterised by Guattari as transmonadic and transitive. The notion of transversality will also be put in relation to the war machine, on which it will thus shed light. (shrink)

Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary associations between word forms and meaning, such as those observed for some properties of sounds and size or shape. Recent evidence suggests that these connections extend to emotional concepts. Here we investigated two types of non-arbitrary relationships. Study 1 examined whether iconicity scores (i.e. resemblance-based mapping between aspects of a word’s form and its meaning) for words can be predicted from ratings in the affective dimensions of valence and arousal and/or the discrete emotions of (...) happiness, anger, fear, disgust and sadness. Words denoting negative concepts were more likely to have more iconic word forms. Study 2 explored whether statistical regularities in single phonemes (i.e. systematicity) predicted ratings in affective dimensions and/or discrete emotions. Voiceless (/p/, /t/) and voiced plosives (/b/, /d/, /g/) were related to high arousing words, whereas high arousing negative words tended to include fricatives (/s/, /z/). Hissing consonants were also more likely to occur in words denoting all negative discrete emotions. Additionally, words conveying certain discrete emotions included specific phonemes. Overall, our data suggest that emotional features might explain variations in iconicity and provide new insight about phonemic patterns showing sound symbolic associations with the affective properties of words. (shrink)

Sound-symbolism is the nonarbitrary link between the sound and meaning of a word. Japanese-speaking children performed better in a verb generalization task when they were taught novel sound-symbolic verbs, created based on existing Japanese sound-symbolic words, than novel nonsound-symbolic verbs (Imai, Kita, Nagumo, & Okada, 2008). A question remained as to whether the Japanese children had picked up regularities in the Japanese sound-symbolic lexicon or were sensitive to universal sound-symbolism. The present study aimed to (...) provide support for the latter. In a verb generalization task, English-speaking 3-year-olds were taught novel sound-symbolic verbs, created based on Japanese sound-symbolism, or novel nonsound-symbolic verbs. English-speaking children performed better with the sound-symbolic verbs, just like Japanese-speaking children. We concluded that children are sensitive to universal sound-symbolism and can utilize it in word learning and generalization, regardless of their native language. (shrink)

Works in science and technology studies have repeatedly pointed to the importance of the visual in scientific practice. STS has also explicated how embodied practice generates scientific knowledge. I aim to supplement this literature by pointing out how sound and hearing are integral aspects of experimentation. Sound helps define how and when lab work is done, and in what kinds of spaces. It structures experimental experience. It affords interactions between researchers and instruments that are richer than could (...) be obtained with vision alone. And it is a site for tacit knowledge, providing a resource for the replication of results, and the transmission of knowledge, and the construction of social boundaries within instrumental communities. (shrink)

One of Paul Ricoeur’s last conferences, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Italian Institute of Philosophical Studies, was pronounced at Unesco in November 2002. He presents the intellectual model represented by the Institute as being both liberal and transversal, and considers these two features as summarizing the task of philosophy.

This article proposes approaching the phenomenon of sound as a fabric of relationships. Critiquing the notion of a sound object as it has become defined thanks to the fixity enabled by sound recording, it focuses on the characteristics of sound that converge towards a relational approach and suggests that there is an inextricable link between the vibrating object, the milieu in which the vibration spreads and the subject who listens. It is probably for this reason that (...) current research — whether in music, sound art or other disciplines that centre on sound, from sound studies to environmental ecology — implicitly seeks to move beyond the concept of sound alone in favour of compounds that combine sound with other elements. While the notions of sound ‘spaces’ and sound ‘environments’ appear as the default options here, three other compounds in particular highlight, in their own way, the relational approach: ‘soundscapes’, ‘sound milieus’, and sound ‘ambiances’ and ‘atmospheres’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.3 (1999) 63-80 [Access article in PDF] The Transversality of Michel de Certeau: Foucault's Panoptic Discourse and the Cartographic Impulse Bryan Reynolds and Joseph Fitzpatrick Above all (and this is a corollary, but an important one), the phenomenological and praxiological analysis of cultural trajectories must allow to be grasped at once a composition of places and the innovation that modifies it by dint of moving and cutting across (...) them. --Michel de Certeau, Culture in the PluralThrough his rigorous examinations of the common, the quotidian, the personal, the plural practices that establish and continually transform societies, Michel de Certeau develops a conception of culture born of the perpetual transgression, however subtle or pronounced, of the boundaries imposed by all totalizing systems, whether theoretical or social. This view of culture as a "cutting across" of boundaries, which can be found in many forms throughout his work, achieves a special significance for the study of subjectification in his discussion of "Spatial Practices" that comprises the third section of The Practice of Everyday Life. In an important essay on Certeau's theory of space, Ian Buchanan argues that "our understanding of culture must commence with an understanding of the formation of the subject," and that the latter is addressed by Certeau through his essays on space [129-30]. Following this assertion, we want to argue that Certeau's analyses of spatial practices in Heterologies, "The Gaze: Nicholas of Cusa," and The Practice of Everyday Life [particularly the chapter "Walking in the City" 91-110], outline a theory that describes subjectivity as what amounts to, as Certeau puts it in Culture in the Plural, "a composition of places and the innovation that modifies it by dint of moving and cutting across them" [146]. Furthermore, by articulating the close relationship between Certeau's spatial theory and our own work on "transversal movement," we will attempt to show that the method of analysis Certeau uses in "Walking in the City" (and describes in several other works) is itself marked by the "transversal" tactics that his theory describes. 1 By focusing in particular on Certeau's methodological critique of Foucault in both The Practice of Everyday Life and Heterologies, we will demonstrate the various ways in which he moves beyond what Bryan Reynolds and James Intriligator have labeled the "dissective-cohesive mode" of analysis, an analytical [End Page 63] [Begin Page 65] approach (characteristic of most dialectical argumentation) that breaks its subject matter into constituent parts and examines those parts with the goal of reassembling them into a unified and accountable whole (such as, say, the city or the human subject in "Walking in the City"). 2 Postmodern Space: Certeau and Jameson In his essay "Heterophenomenology, or Certeau's Theory of Space," Ian Buchanan situates Certeau's writings on the production of space within the postmodern debate over the autonomy of the subject, opposing Certeau's view to Fredric Jameson's "assumption that the subject takes his or her psychic bearings from the built environment and only has certain existence so long as he or she can cognitively 'map' this environment" [Buchanan 114]. Citing the example of the Westin Bonaventure hotel in Los Angeles, Jameson argues that "this latest mutation in space--postmodern hyperspace--has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and cognitively to map its position in a mappable external world" [44]. The effect on cultural politics, according to Jameson, is that the subject "submerged" by this postmodern hyperspace is deprived of the "critical distance" that makes possible the "positioning of the cultural act outside of the massive Being of capital" [48]. Buchanan finds in "Walking in the City" the basis for a critique of this view though a conception of space stemming from "heterophe-nomenology," defined as "a phenomenology predicated by a heterogeneously constituted subject which does not take for granted the unity of the body" [112]. Focusing on Certeau's debt to Merleau-Ponty's theories of perception (which can best be seen in... (shrink)

The disruptions of coronavirus disease 2019 in the year 2020 reshaped all aspects of life, including religious practices and rituals. As more religious activities shifted to digital space during the lockdown periods, there was a growing need to examine the link between religion and digital media. Using the model of the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa, this article draws on the notion of transversal rationality and concepts of rationality, cognitive, evaluative and pragmatic to posit that COVID-19 has configured (...) traditional missional and liturgical spaces in ways that locate the agency of the marginalised at the centre. The article highlights how COVID-19 configured Christian mission as it disrupted power dynamics through religious digital spaces, which emerged as a new way of reimaging a missional church. These new digital spaces mediate between interaction and ‘telepresence’, embodied in the representations of the sacred available through online religious systems in practices where users are no longer ordinary believers – but religious participants who have power and freedom to choose. Although this is not a new phenomenon, the article concludes that such spaces created by COVID-19 shifts in power dynamics present opportunities for ordinary members to reinvent new meanings on what it means to be present or absent, to name, narrate and reinterpret the divine and forge new meanings towards participating in the mission of God.Contribution: Although this is not a new phenomenon, this article represents a systematic and practical reflection within a paradigm in which the intersection of philosophy, religious studies, social sciences, humanities and natural sciences generate an interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary contested discourse. (shrink)

The Body in Sound, Music and Performance brings together cutting-edge contributions from women working on and researching contemporary sound practice. This highly interdisciplinary book features a host of international contributors and places emphasis on developments beyond the western world, including movements growing across Latin America. Within the book, the body is situated as both the site and centre for knowledge making and creative production. Chapters explore how insightful theoretical analysis, new methods, innovative practises, and sometimes within the socio-cultural (...) conditions of racism, sexism and classicism, the body can rise above, reshape and deconstruct understood ideas about performance practices, composition, and listening/sensing. This book will be of interest to both practitioners and researchers in the fields of sonic arts, sound design, music, acoustics and performance. (shrink)

Sound Unseen explores the phenomenon of acousmatic sound-a sound that one hears without seeing its source-and presents a powerful argument for the central yet overlooked role of acousmatic sound in music aesthetics, sound studies, literature, philosophy and the history of the senses.

This paper discusses the possibility of an ethics of difference. It begins with an introduction to current poststructural and critical theories in order to show their significance for transcultural politics and ethics. Its theme is formulated in terms of the debate between the affirmation of ethical cognitivism cast in the form of universalism and the advocacy of moral skepticism in the mode of communitarianism. Distancing itself from the idea of universal morality, this paper attempts to respond to the challenge of (...) both communitarians and deconstructionists in contemporary French poststructuralism. In the end, it argues for transversality in place of universality. (shrink)

_Humanesis_ critically examines central strains of posthumanism, searching out biases in the ways that human–technology coupling is explained. Specifically, it interrogates three approaches taken by posthumanist discourse: scientific, humanist, and organismic. David Cecchetto’s investigations reveal how each perspective continues to hold on to elements of the humanist tradition that it is ostensibly mobilized against. His study frontally desublimates the previously unseen presumptions that underlie each of the three thought lines and offers incisive appraisals of the work of three prominent thinkers: (...) Ollivier Dyens, Katherine Hayles, and Mark Hansen. To materially ground the problematic of posthumanism, _Humanesis_ interweaves its theoretical chapters with discussions of artworks. These highlight the topos of sound, demonstrating how aurality might produce new insights in a field that has been dominated by visualization. Cecchetto, a media artist, scrutinizes his own collaborative artistic practice in which he elucidates the variegated causal chains that compose human–technological coupling. _Humanesis_ advances the posthumanist conversation in several important ways. It proposes the term “technological posthumanism” to focus on the discourse as it relates to technology without neglecting its other disciplinary histories. It suggests that deconstruction remains relevant to the enterprise, especially with respect to the performative dimension of language. It analyzes artworks not yet considered in the light of posthumanism, with a particular emphasis on the role of aurality. And the form of the text introduces a reflexive component that exemplifies how the dialogue of posthumanism might progress without resorting to the types of unilateral narratives that the book critiques. (shrink)