Echoes of Subjectivity: A Literary Acoustemology of the Home

Katharina Schmidt

About this exposition

This paper works towards an acoustemology of the home by investigating the home’s depiction in a literary text, Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway. This interdisciplinary approach is chosen to explore the potential of tapping into sonic epistemologies encapsulated in literature. Borrowing Brandon LaBelle’s concept of acoustic territories, relationships between notions of home and the auditory are traced in the novel, leading to an analysis that develops the sonic figure of the echo as a micro-epistemology. In a close reading of selected scenes, the aesthetic and philosophical implications are examined and, drawing on Levinas, Irigaray, Nancy, and Deleuze, this text traces how the figure of the echo ultimately provides the structure of the subject as it is constituted in the ethical encounter, in the resonance with an Other. In turn, this analysis reflects on how the conditions of the “feminine” sphere of the home inform conceptualizations of ethics, politics, and philosophy.

type	research exposition
date	25/03/2021
published	25/03/2021
last modified	25/03/2021
status	published
share status	private
copyright	Schmidt
license	CC BY-NC-ND
url	https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1201586/1201587
published in	Journal of Sonic Studies
portal issue	21. Issue 21

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Echoes of Subjectivity: A Literary Acoustemology of the Home (2021)

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