Consequences of the Affective Turn: Exploring Music Practices from without and within

Srđan Atanasovski

Authors

Srđan Atanasovski Institute of Musicology SASA, Belgrade https://orcid.org/0009-0008-8986-5604

Keywords:

Félix Guattar, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Lefebvre, critique of semiotics, affective turn, music and sound studies

Abstract

In this paper I explore the challenges of the “affective turn” and map new avenues of music research in this direction. I discuss four paths of enquiry, in deviation from the semiotic models: the discovery of the non-signified materiality and its potentiality to generate affects, the potentiality of affect to de-signify, the ability of sign machines to catalyse the production of intensities and, finally, the power of social machines to overcode the produced affect through non-discursive mechanisms. I argue that the affective turn in musicology can provide a different structuring of a view from without and a view from within, calling both for finely tuned “close reading” and for the ability of the researcher to grasp the performative context.

References

Agamben, G. (2009) “What is an Apparatus?”, In What is an Apparatus? And Other Essays, transl. by D. Kishik and S. Pedatella, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1–24.

Atanasovski, S. (2015) “Hybrid Affects of Religious Nationalism: Pilgrimages to Kosovo and the Soundscapes of the Utopian Past”, Southeastern Europe 39: 237–263.

Barthes, R. (1977) “The Grain of the Voice”, In Image Music Text, ed. and transl. by S. Heath, London: Fontana Press, 179–189.

Barthes, R. (1981) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, transl. by R. Howard, New York: Hill and Wang.

Blackman, L. (2008) “Affect, Relationality, and the ‘Problem of Personality’”, Theory, Culture, and Society 25: 23–47.

Brennan, T. (2004) The Transmission of Affect, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Brody, Y. (2012) “How Ideology Seduces Us – and How We Can (Try to) Escape It”,http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12972-the-perverts-guide-to-ideology-how-ideologyseduces-us-and-how-we-can-try-to-escape-it#, accessed 1st March 2015.

Brousse, M.-H. (2007) “Hysteria and Sinthome”, In V. Voruz and B. Wolf (eds.) Later Lacan: An Introduction, Ithaca: State University of New York Press, 83–94.

Clough, P. T. and Halley, J. (eds.) (2007) The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1983) Anti-Oedipus Capitalism and Schizophrenia, transl. by R. Hurley, M. Seem and H.R. Lane, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus Capitalism and Schizophrenia, transl. by B. Massumi, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

Diego, C. (2013) “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology”, http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-perverts-guide-to-ideology, accessed 1st March 2015.

Douglas, M. and Ney, S. (1998) Missing Persons: A Critique of the Personhood in the Social Sciences, Berkeley: University of California Press.

EDA Collective (2014) “Are Rammstein Fascist or Postmodern?”, http://www.everydayanalysis.com/post/85313158579/are-rammstein-fascist-or-postmodern, accessed 1st March 2015.

Foucault, M. (1983) Preface for G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Anti-Oedipus Capitalism and Schizophrenia, transl. by R. Hurley, M. Seem and H. R. Lane, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, xi–xiv.

Goehr, L. (1992) The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Goodman, S. (2010) Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Gregg, M. and Seigworth, G. J. (eds.) (2010) The Affect Theory Reader, Durham–London: Duke University Press.

Hardt, M. (2007) “Foreword: What Affects Are Good For”, In P. T. Clough and J. Halley (eds.) The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, Durham and London: Duke University Press, ix–xiii.

Hatten, R.S. (2006) Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics and Tropes, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Hofman, A. (2015a) Glasba, politika, afekt: novo življenje partizanskih pesmi v Sloveniji, Ljubljana: ZRC SAZU.

Hofman, A. (2015b) “Introduction to the co-edited issue ‘Music, Affect and Memory Politics in Post-Yugoslav space’”, Southeastern Europe 39: 145–164.

Hofman, A. (2015c) “The Affective Turn in Ethnomusicology”, Musicology 18: 35-55.

Klein, M. (2012) “Chopin Dreams: The Mazurka in C# Minor, Op. 30, No. 4”, 19th-Century Music 35: 238–260.

Klein, M. L. (2015) Music and the Crises of the Modern Subject, Bloomington–Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, in print.

Kramer, L. (2004) “Odradek Analysis: Reflections on Musical Ontology”, Music Analysis 23: 287–309.

Kramer, L. (2009) “The Devoted Ear: Music as Contemplation”, In K. Chapin and L. Kramer (eds.) Musical Meaning and Human Values, Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 59–78.

Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space, transl. by D. Nicholson-Smith, Oxford: Blackwell.

Lefebvre, H. (2004) Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, transl. by S. Elden and G. Moore, New York: Continuum.

Leys, R. (2011) “The Turn to Affect: A Critique”, Critical Inquiry 37: 434–472.

Massumi, B. (2002) Parables for the Virtual Movement, Affect, Sensation, Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Petrov, A. (2015) “The Songs We Love to Sing and the History We Like to Remember: Tereza Kesovija’s Come Back in Serbia”, Southeastern Europe 39: 192–214.

Seyfert, R. (2012) “Beyond Personal Feelings and Collective Emotions: Toward a Theory of Social Affect”, Theory, Culture & Society 29: 27–46.

Spinoza, B. (1994) “The Ethics”, In A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works, ed. and transl. by E. Curley, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 85–265.

Tarasti, E. (1994) A Theory of Musical Semiotics, Bloomington–Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Thompson M. and Biddle, I. (2013b) “Introduction: Somewhere between the signifying and the sublime”, In Thompson and Biddle 2013a, 1–24.

Thompson, M. and Biddle, I. (eds.) (2013a) Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience, London: Bloomsbury.

Thrift, N. (2008) Non-Representational Theories Space, Politics, Affect, New York: Routledge.

Tomkins, S.S. (1995) Exploring Affect: The Selected Writings of Silvan S Tomkins, ed. by E.V. Demos, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Consequences of the Affective Turn: Exploring Music Practices from without and within

Authors

Keywords:

Abstract

References

Downloads

Published

How to Cite

Issue

Section

License

You are free to:

Under the following terms:

Current Issue

Information