Defense Date
2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Media, Art, and Text
First Advisor
Dr. Adin E. Lears
Second Advisor
Dr. Mary Caton Lingold
Third Advisor
Stephen Vitiello
Fourth Advisor
Dr. Oliver Speck
Abstract
This dissertation examines technical interventions into sonic phenomena in the interest of theorizing a “sonic technicity,” drawing specifically upon the critical negativity developed in the work of Theodor W. Adorno and Georges Bataille. This work interrogates the manner in which sound, despite every effort to contain and reproduce it, has evaded rational capture. These efforts of sono-technical intervention, if provoked, offer a counterhistory—an immanent critique—of the presumed subjective-agentive model of man’s relationship to the world. Iterations of sonic technicity emerging from recording and broadcast technology, electronic music, pre-modern techniques of the voice, gothic media, auditory weaponry, and other instances are extrapolated towards a critical process with implications for thinking with sound in aesthetic, cultural, theoretical and political-economic contexts.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
5-8-2024
Included in
Aesthetics Commons, Audio Arts and Acoustics Commons, Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Continental Philosophy Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons, Political Economy Commons, Theory and Criticism Commons