John Mowitt - Gasping
Listen now
Description
Much aesthetic theory has concerned itself with the status and significance of the image. Resisting this "photology," my paper (a chapter from the forthcoming SOUNDS: THE AMBIENT HUMANITIES) will explore, by contrasting the sonic to the phonic, the attractions of tying aesthetic experience to sound, specifically the sound of "the gasp." Through readings of Derrida's SPECTRES OF MARX, McNally's LAST GASPS and Rushdie's THE MOOR'S LAST SIGH, I will propose that the gasp vents us to what Spinoza called "admiratio" (wonder), a break that stirs the perception "photology" has long organised around the image (whether beautiful, sublime or craven). Photology, like the particulate matter generating the optical effect of a sunset, is thus read as an inaudible mode of sound pollution.
More Episodes
Published 06/01/15
This talk deals with four lures proffered by the Anthropocene. The first three: hyper-modernisation, or the colonisation of deep time by the anthropos; apocalypse therapy, or melancholic revelry in the end times; the significance sky hook, or “cfp: X in the Anthropocene”. These three are lures to...
Published 06/01/15
An important theoretical underpinning of biosemiotics is the semiotic philosophy of American scientist and semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) and his observation that ‘the universe is perfused with signs’. Semiotic biology was born from a similar insight, that living systems – cells,...
Published 06/01/15