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The Sonic Turn

Bibliographic Data

ID8083387
AuthorsTom Mcenaney (corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume47
Issue4
Pages80-109
Publication date2019-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
Venuediacritics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0300-7162 • E-ISSN: 1080-6539
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/dia.2019.0035
OpenAlexW3112699457
LanguageEN
Citations received14

This article approaches the sonic turn as a coherent set of methodological approaches across a variety of disciplines that begin with the publication of Emily Thompson’s The Soundscape of Modernity (2002) and Jonathan Sterne’s The Audible Past (2003), and provide an alternative to the Saussurean edict to ignore the semiotic qualities of material sound. These texts and those published in their wake proceed with an emphasis on the detail of sound as an isolated object of study, but also sound as a more general principle of selection beyond “music” or “speech”; a reorientation to denaturalize hearing and reconceive listening practices as historically contingent, material, and social techniques; the need for a media archaeology that links technology and technique without falling into “impact histories” or “media determinism.” While the sonic turn can be capacious, the polemical approach taken in this essay opposes an uncritical affective “vibrational ontology” and a poststructuralist understanding of sound as supplement. Instead, the essay highlights the importance of scholarship that situates Black, Latin American, and disability studies as central to research into how audile techniques bring together the material and the symbolic to hear how historical cultures have constructed ontologies by separating sound from language in order to create and sustain hierarchies of power between the human and the nonhuman, the abled and the disabled, the lettered and the listeners

Acoustics · Active listening · Aesthetics · Epistemology · Linguistics · Object (grammar · Ontology · Power (physics · Scholarship · Semiotics · Sociology · Sound (geography · Sound art · Soundscape · Tone (literature · Variety (cybernetics · Computer Science · Diverse Musicological Studies · Music History and Culture · Communication · Philosophy

  • Postdigital Soundscapes

    Open Access•Derek R Ford•Postdigital Science and Education•2023

  • Como estamos pensando o som nas Artes Cênicas

    Open Access•Ana Wegner, Rafaella Uhiara•Revista Brasileira de Estudos da…•2024

  • Comment pense-t-on le son en Arts du Spectacle

    Open Access•Ana Wegner, Rafaella Uhiara•Revista Brasileira de Estudos da…•2024

  • How do we think about Sound in the Performing Arts

    Open Access•Ana Wegner, Rafaella Uhiara•Revista Brasileira de Estudos da…•2024

  • Matters of Sound. Ein Denkhorizont für Klang als epistemische Größe in der feministischen Theorie

    Open Access•Marion Schulze•GENDER – Zeitschrift für…•2025

  • Music Deferred

    Open Access•SUSAN C BAY•twentieth-century music•2024

  • Introduction

    Tamara L Mitchell•Journal of Latin American…•2026

  • Sound art and attentive listening to nature in Hong Kong

    Open Access•Minna Valjakka•China Information•2026

  • Words and Rhythm, Sound and Text

    Open Access•Charlie D Hankin•Latin American Literary Review•2024

  • Doing sonic urban ethnography

    Open Access•Ana Aceska, Karolina Doughty et al.•Urban Studies•2024

  • Listening to the cultural acoustics of migrant voices

    Open Access•Tanvi Solanki•European Journal of Cultural…•2023

  • Acoustic mediations

    Ricardo Andrade Fernández•Journal of Latin American…•2026

  • The sounds of who we are

    Open Access•Ana Aceska, Karolina Doughty•Urban Geography•2024

  • Fugitive Sounds

    Jane Kassavin•Journal of Latin American…•2024

Unique citing works14
Citations per year4,67
Citation span2023 - 2026 (4)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 14

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