Description
Book SynopsisThis collection of essays addresses recent and historical changes in the ways in which listening has been conceived as a cultural agency and act. It argues that listening, by emancipating from an essentially implied, passive-receiving, and subjected position, has become an explicit factor in culture and the object of proactive collective and individual politics.
Trade Review"Thresholds of Listening intervenes into an extraordinarily wide range of subjects, ranging from masochism and torture at one extreme to Cage and Kafka at the other. Chapters zoom by at high speed, covering enormous ground and wrestling on all fronts with music's potential value as a transformative biopolitical praxis. The level of scholarship is excellent, and van Maas's cast of contributors includes stellar names alongside emerging scholars. This is less a book about listening to music than a virtuosic inquiry into the relationships between listening, hearing, sound, and space and an investigation of the limits of the human body." -- -Anthony Gritten Royal Academy of Music "Clearly the scholarship that underpins Thresholds of Listening is generally very thorough and 'experimental,' which tests conventional understandings of scholarship. Given its unique qualities, I would rate this book as an important contribution that will be useful across a number of disciplines, from musicology and music theory to philosophy and literary theory, but also touching upon certain strands of science." -- -Kenneth Gloag Cardiff University
Table of ContentsContents Introduction Sander van Maas 1. The Auditory Re-turn (The Point of Listening) Peter Szendy 2. Dear Listener ...: Music and the Invention of Subjectivity Lawrence Kramer 3. Scenes of Devastation: Interpellation, Finite and Infinite Sander van Maas 4. Positive Feedback: Listening Behind Hearing David Wills 5. Antennas Have Long Since Invaded Our Brains: Listening to 'the Other Music' in Friedrich Kittler Melle Kromhout 6. Movement at the Boundaries of Listening, Composition, and Performance Jason Freeman 7. The Biopolitics of Noise: Kafka's 'Der Bau' Anthony Adler 8. Torture as an Instrument of Music John Hamilton 9. Stop it, I Like it! Embodiment, Masochism and Listening for Traumatic Pleasure Robert Sholl 10. Sounds of Belonging: Accented Writing in Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight Liedeke Plate 11. Back to the Beat: Silent Orality in Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries Kiene Brillenburg Wurth 12. The Discovery of Slowness in Music Alexander Rehding 13. Negotiating Ecstasy: Electronic Dance Music and the Temporary Autonomous Zone Andrew Shenton Notes List of Contributors Index
