09 Feb Surround Sound
Aranye Fradenburg (English, UCSB)
Wednesday, February 9, 2011 / 4:00 PM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB
“Surround Sound” explores the affective significance of the relationship between sound and the experience of space, particularly with respect to language acquisition and its role in attachment. The practice of making and understanding meaningful sounds, and their ability to travel in and even mark out space, hence reach the ears of absent others, begins very early in life–at about 6 prenatal months. This lecture argues that, as a consequence, recent emphases on the disconnectedness of verbal from pre- or paraverbal experience – e.g. in clinical practice and in affect theory – need to step down. Affective spatiality depends first and foremost on our use of sound to construct meaning.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Geographies of Place series.