Abstract
Abstract 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.
Highlights
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.”
We propose a figure for the transcendence of the separation of the sensible: in rereading 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
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
Summary
Sound studies and deaf studies take as their respective starting points two apparently opposing assumptions: while sound studies postulate that visuocentrism is prevalent in Western history and culture, the concepts and theories of deaf studies, by contrast, claim that the Western world and society is deeply audiocentric.[1]. Odyssey Towards a Sirenic Thinking 233 can provide a theoretical framework for understanding these experiences, and thereby offer a tool to address and to overcome the discriminatory structures at their root Listening practices and the figure of the listener are erected against the dominant visual regime of the sensible.[21] Acoustemology, sonic thinking, and sonic epistemologies conceptualise epistemic subjectivities of listening in such a way as to offer an alternative to visuocentric subjectivity These conceptualisations propose a “real” listener in opposition to a product of traditional musicology, the ideal listener. Following the term “sonic thinking” shaped by Bernd Herzogenrath,[25] this self-consciousness is suggested as “sirenic thinking.”
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