Sound Studies without Auditory Culture

a Critique of the Ontological Turn

Abstract

“Sound studies” and “auditory culture” are terms often used synonymously to designate a broad, heterogeneous, interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Yet a potential disjunction between these terms remains. Some scholars within sound studies, by turning to the ontology of sound and to the material-affective processes that lie ‘beneath representation and signification’, reject auditory cultural studies. In this essay, I consider the “ontological turn” in sound studies in the work of three authors (Steve Goodman, Christoph Cox, and Greg Hainge) and offer a few arguments against it. First, I describe the Deleuzian metaphysical framework shared by all three authors, before addressing their particular arguments. Then, I consider Goodman’s vibrational ontology. While Goodman claims to overcome dualism, I argue that his theory is more rigidly dualist — and poorer at explaining the relation of cognition to affect — than the cultural and representational accounts he rejects. Next, Cox and Hainge slip culturally grounded analogies into their supposedly culture-free analyses of artworks. Finally, I reflect on the notion of an “auditory culture,” and suggest the “ontological turn” in sound studies is actually a form of “ontography” — a description of the ontological commitments and beliefs of particular subjects or communities — one that neglects the constitutive role of auditory culture at its peril.