Author: Michel Chion File Type: pdf First published in French in 1998, revised in 2010, and appearing here in English for the first time, Michel Chions Sound addresses the philosophical, interpretive, and practical questions that inform our encounters with sound. Chion considers how cultural institutions privilege some sounds above others and how spurious distinctions between noise and sound guide the ways we hear and value certain sounds. He critiques the tenacious tendency to understand sounds in relation to their sources and advocates acousmatic listeninglistening without visual access to a sounds causeto disentangle ourselves from auditory habits and prejudices. Yet sound can no more be reduced to mere perceptual phenomena than encapsulated in the sciences of acoustics and physiology. As Chion reminds us and explores in depth, a wide range of linguistic, sensory, cultural, institutional, and media- and technologically-specific factors interact with and shape sonic experiences. Interrogating these interactions, Chion stimulates us to think about how we might open our ears to new sounds, become more nuanced and informed listeners, and more fully understand the links between how we hear and what we do. First published in French in 1998, revised in 2010, and appearing here in English for the first time, Michel Chions Sound addresses the philosophical, interpretive, and practical questions that inform our encounters with sound. Chion considers how cultural institutions privilege some sounds above others and how spurious distinctions between noise and sound guide the ways we hear and value certain sounds. He critiques the tenacious tendency to understand sounds in relation to their sources and advocates acousmatic listeninglistening without visual access to a sounds causeto disentangle ourselves from auditory habits and prejudices. Yet sound can no more be reduced to mere perceptual phenomena than encapsulated in the sciences of acoustics and physiology. As Chion reminds us and explores in depth, a wide range of linguistic, sensory, cultural, institutional, and media- and technologically-specific factors interact with and shape sonic experiences. Interrogating these interactions, Chion stimulates us to think about how we might open our ears to new sounds, become more nuanced and informed listeners, and more fully understand the links between how we hear and what we do. **Review Michel Chion is one of the leadingand most prolificwriters on sound, but only a few of his many books are available in English. This impeccable translation of Sound will make Chions outstanding work available to a broader audience. (Veit Erlmann, author of Reason and Resonance A History of Modern Aurality) Sound stands out as a strong statement of some of Michel Chions core theoretical concepts and will be a major contribution to sound studies. It provides a nice alternative phenomenology of sound, and challenges many of the pieties still in circulation. (Jonathan Sterne, author of MP3 The Meaning of a Format) Chions work is refreshing in many ways.... It is clear that Chion lives his topic deeply, and has not simply researched it. Alongside the extended theorisation, the book teems with thought-provoking observations, like the best of Jean Baudrillard (who could always be appreciated for his vignettes if not for his theories) or Roland Barthes. How good it is to find that someone else has asked himself why being subjected to one side of a conversation on a mobile phone is even more frustrating than overhearing a two-way conversation in person and Chion has an answer. (David Revill Times Higher Education) About the Author Michel Chion is a composer, filmmaker, teacher, researcher, and the author of several books, including Film, A Sound Art The Voice in Cinema and Audio-Vision Sound on Screen. James A. Steintrager is Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and European Languages and Studies at the University of California, Irvine he is the author, most recently, of The Autonomy of Pleasure Libertines, License, and Sexual Revolution.

Author: Jürgen Habermas File Type: pdf In this important new book, Jurgen Habermas takes up certain fundamental questions of philosophy. While much of his recent work has been concerned with issues of morality and law, in this new work Habermas returns to the traditional philosophical questions of truth, objectivity and reality which were at the centre of his earlier classic book Knowledge and Human Interests. How can the norms that underpin the linguistically structured world in which we live be brought into step with the contingency of the development of socio-cultural forms of life? How can the idea that our world exists independently of our attempts to describe it be reconciled with the insight that we can never reach reality without the mediation of language and that bare reality is therefore unattainable? In Knowledge and Human Interests Habermas answered these questions with reference to a weak naturalism and a transcendental-pragmatic realism. Since then, however, he has developed a formal pragmatic theory which is based on an analysis of speech acts and language use. In this new volume Habermas takes up the philosophical questions of truth, objectivity and reality from the perspective of his linguistically-based pragmatic theory. The final section addresses the limits of philosophy and reassesses the relation between theory and practice from a perspective that could be described as post-Marxist. This volume, now available in paperback as well, by one of the worlds leading philosophers will be essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy, social theory and the humanities and social sciences generally. **