没有听觉文化的声音研究——对本体论转向的一个批判

Sound studies without auditory culture:a critique of the ontological turn

"声音研究"和"听觉文化"常常同义替换地命名广泛的、异质的、跨学科的研究领域。然而这两个术语之间依然存在着潜在分歧。声音研究领域的一些学者,通过转向声音的本体论和"表征与意义之下"的物质-情感过程,拒绝了听觉文化研究。在这篇文章中,我考察了三位作者(史蒂夫·古德曼、克里斯朵夫·考克斯和格雷格·海恩格)在声音研究中的"本体论转向",并提出了一些反对意见。首先,我描述了三位作者共享的德勒兹的形而上学框架,然后讨论了他们的具体论点。接下来,我考察了古德曼的振动本体论。虽然古德曼声称要克服二元论(dualism),但我认为他的理论比他所拒绝的文化和表征论述更为二元论(dualist),而且在解释认知与情感的关系方面更薄弱。其次是考克斯和海恩格的美学理论,他们都是本体美学(onto-aesthetics)的支持者,认为艺术作品可以揭示自身的本体论。我认为本体美学建立在一个范畴错误之上,混淆了具象(embodiment)与例证(exemplification)。由于这种混淆,考克斯和海恩格从建基于文化的类比滑到了对艺术作品的去文化(culture-free)分析。最后,我反思了"听觉文化"的概念,并提出声音研究中的"本体论转向"实际上是"本体书写学"的一种形式--一种对特定主体或共同体的本体论承诺和信念的描述--在其冒险中忽略了听觉文化的构成性角色。

"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’s aesthetic theories are considered.Both are proponents of onto-aesthetics,the belief that works of arts can disclose their ontology.I argue that onto-aesthetics rests on a category mistake,confusing embodiment with exemplification.Because of the confusion,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.