Sounding the “Spirit of My Silence”

Sufjan Stevens’s 2015 album Carrie and Lowell threw indie rock fans into collective mourning with its sonic depiction of feeling so much to the point of experiencing an overwhelming affective nothingness. Written as an elegy for Stevens’s mother, the album performs Stevens’s loss by creating a static soundscape punctuated by moments of stark sonic absence. Some moments evoke the emotionally ineffable (rhythmic stutters between phrases), some occupy a sonically liminal space with white noise negating silence, and others are calls to physical action (flipping over the LP) that literally give the listen pause. This paper places an autoethnographic encounter with a Carrie and Lowell pre-release “silent listening party” in conversation with Roland Barthes’s theory of affect and grief as originally developed in Camera Lucida: A Note on Photography. This paper explores the possibility that Barthes’s theory offers an infrastructure for approaching affect and musical listening by highlighting the ways in which the individual functions as an affective archive, navigating culturally-coded and pre-cognitive physiological responses to aesthetic objects. Drawing upon Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis’s work on structured silences, this paper argues that moments of foregrounded silence in Carrie and Lowell provide musical analogies for Barthes’s punctum of time and death.

Both Classical and Quantum Information: Both Bit and Qubit. Both Physical and Transcendental Time

Information can be considered as the most fundamental, philosophical, physical and mathematical concept originating from the totality by means of physical and mathematical transcendentalism (the counterpart of philosophical transcendentalism). Classical and quantum information, particularly by their units, bit and qubit, correspond and unify the finite and infinite. As classical information is relevant to finite series and sets, as quantum information, to infinite ones. A fundamental joint relativity of the finite and infinite, of the external and internal is to be investigated. The corresponding invariance is able to define physical action and its quantity only on the basis of information and especially: on the relativity of classical and quantum information. The concept of transcendental time, an epoché in relation to the direction of time arrow can be defined. Its correlate is that information invariant to the finite and infinite, therefore unifying both classical and quantum information.

Both classical & quantum information: both bit & qubit. Both physical & transcendental time

Information can be considered as the most fundamental, philosophical,physical and mathematical concept originating from the totality by means of physicaland mathematical transcendentalism (the counterpart of philosophicaltranscendentalism). Classical and quantum information, particularly by their units, bitand qubit, correspond and unify the finite and infinite. As classical information isrelevant to finite series and sets, as quantum information, to infinite ones. Afundamental joint relativity of the finite and infinite, of the external and internal is tobe investigated. The corresponding invariance is able to define physical action and itsquantity only on the basis of information and especially: on the relativity of classicaland quantum information. The concept of transcendental time, an epoché in relation tothe direction of time arrow can be defined. Its correlate is that information invariant tothe finite and infinite, therefore unifying both classical and quantum information.

What Does Violence Have to Do with History?

Historians’ treatment of violence has been dominated by a binary theoretical orientation. A critique of this outlook leads to articulating a new, three-part model of violence as a cultural history problem. Neither functionalist readings in terms of power nor interpretations in terms of signification sufficiently explain violence: it is proposed that risk operates as a bridging category, bringing out the unique features violence introduces to the general social contest over domination and meaning. This chapter details the insights drawn from three key risk analysis theories—prospect theory, edgework, and the calculus of jeopardy—to model risk as a dimension of violence. It defines key concepts used throughout the book: violence (‘forceful physical action apt to cause harm’), power, signification, and risk, as well as risk magnitude, likelihood, realms, and domains

SEEING AND HEARING DISABILITY IN MAURICIO KAGEL'S REPERTOIRE FROM STAATSTHEATER

This article adopts a disability studies perspective to evaluate the ways in which Mauricio Kagel's Repertoire from Staatstheater reimagines human bodies. Objects and bodies interact in myriad ways within the one hundred vignettes of Repertoire: some objects hinder or aid the bodies on stage, while others become incorporated within the body, acting as a single expressive unit. My analysis demonstrates the ways in which both objects and bodies transform their traditional roles as ascribed by society, rejecting procrustean physiques. Using disability studies concepts such as embodiment and experientialism I evaluate sound and physical action as inextricable expressions of imaginative corporealities. Reflecting upon Kagel's identity as an outsider of the European avant-garde, as well as his irreverence for oppressive social institutions, I evince that other forms of hierarchical disruptions are at play, namely that abled bodies do not preside over disabled ones and notions of beauty hold no clout.

PARALINGUISTICS – THE ROLE OF GAZE IN PARALINGUISTICS

"Paralinguistics" is derived from the Latin words ("para" - beyond,"lingua" - language), meaning "beyond the language", "used with the language".Paralinguistics is a branch of linguistics, meaning "beside the language" and inlinguistics under this term the expression of an idea in a non-verbal way is meant.Accordingly, the words "non-verbal", "extralinguistics" are used as synonyms for thisterm. "Every natural physical action of a person is considered a nonverbal means,which is associated with the process of communication of speech, without beingincluded in the category of kinetic nonverbal means ..." (GV Kolshansky.)1