Sonophilia / Sonophobia: Sonic Others in the Poetry of Edward Sapir

One of the key findings in early visual culture studies is a profound ambivalence toward images, which is intricately tied up with hegemonic conceptions of cultural, racial, and sexual Others. Starting from W. J. T. Mitchell’s diagnosis of iconophilia and iconophobia for visual culture, Iargue that recent sound studies yield parallel conclusions with regard to sonic culture, as scholars such as Jonathan Sterne point to a long tradition of writing on sound that is also characterized by attraction to and repulsion of media and sign systems other than written language. On the basis of a theoretical conception of what I term sonophilia and sonophobia, then, this essay asserts that it is precisely the ambivalence toward sound that is at the center of the poetry of anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir. In their treatment of auditory sense perceptions as the Other of written language, Sapir’s poems “Music” and “Zuni” attest to the fact that not only images but notions of sound, too, are shaped by ideological associations embedded in semiotic and sensory oppositions

Sonic Others in Early Sound Studies and the Poetry of Edward Sapir

Characteristically, early research in soundscapes is suffused with a sense of sonophilia; that is, a fascination with auditory perception and sound as the inferiorized Other of sight. Soundscape scholars have thus often conceived of their work as a salvage operation, which is conducted to save what would otherwise be irretrievably lost to a visual regime. This moral impetus to redeem the "sonic Other" is at the center of this article, in which I investigate how notions of sonic alterity interweave with treatments of social and cultural alterity. To explore and interrogate the nexus of social, cultural, and sonic alterity for its political and ethical ramifications, I analyze the acoustics of the poetry of Edward Sapir. Sapir played a key role in the formation of cultural anthropology and the early development of linguistic anthropology. What is far less known is that he is also the author of over six hundred poems, some of which were published in such renowned magazines as Poetry and The Dial. Focusing on the poems "To a Street Violinist" and "Harvest," I probe the dynamics of an anthropo-literary project that sets out to salvage both non-visual sense perceptions and other-than-modern, Western ways of life

Folk Communities in Translation: Salvage Primitivism and Edward Sapir’s French-Canadian Folk Songs

Today, Edward Sapir (1884-1939) is best remembered for his contributions to Boasian cultural anthropology and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. What is less well-known is that he also wrote and published poetry, a passion that he shared with fellow students of Boas such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. His poetic output is distinguished, however, by experiments in a wide variety of forms: from sonnets to brief quasi-imagist vignettes, from children’s poems to translations of folk songs. In this chapter, we focus on four of his renditions of popular French-Canadian folk songs, which were published in the July 1920 issue of Poetry. After being awarded with an honorable mention from the magazine, he published three more folk songs in Queen's Quarterly (1922) and co-authored, with Marius Barbeau, the anthology Folk Songs of French Canada (Yale UP, 1925). Sapir's interest in the cultural practices of folk communities--practices that are also popular in a second sense of the term (produced by the people for the people)--links up with his studies of Native American languages, both of which are driven by a desire to preserve for posterity cultures perceived as giving way to the pressures of modernization, and a broader search for authenticity that energized the modernist movement and prompted Poetry magazine to devote its February 1917 issue to ‘aboriginal poetry’, that is, interpretations of Native American songs by Anglo-American writers. Sapir's "Note on French-Canadian Folk-songs" thus emphasizes that "the great currents of modern civilization have, until recent days, left practically unaffected this colony of old France [Quebec], where the folk still observe customs, use implements, recite tales, and sing songs that take us right back to the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries." In Sapir's versatile hands, salvage anthropology and literary primitivism go hand in hand. This chapter analyzes Sapir's versions of French-Canadian folk-songs from the transnational perspective that has reshaped American Studies since the 1990s. In crossing linguistic, national, generic, and medial boundaries, these poems bring into contact a variety of communal sites and practices, including early modern European songs, the popular realm of twentieth-century French-Canadian folk culture, and the literary community of the editors, contributors, and readers of the little magazines where modernism happened. Our chapter inquires into the epistemological and political ramifications of the various translations that take place as sounds are converted into texts and one language into another

Urokinase-Type Plasminogen Activator Promotes Paracellular Transmigration of Neutrophils Via Mac-1, But Independently of Urokinase-Type Plasminogen Activator Receptor

Background: Urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) has recently been implicated in the pathogenesis of ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury. The underlying mechanisms remain largely unclear. Methods and Results: Using in vivo microscopy on the mouse cremaster muscle, I/R-elicited firm adherence and transmigration of neutrophils were found to be significantly diminished in uPA-deficient mice and in mice treated with the uPA inhibitor WX-340, but not in uPA receptor (uPAR)–deficient mice. Interestingly, postischemic leukocyte responses were significantly reduced on blockade of the integrin CD11b/Mac-1, which also serves as uPAR receptor. Using a cell transfer technique, postischemic adherence and transmigration of wild-type leukocytes were significantly decreased in uPA-deficient animals, whereas uPA-deficient leukocytes exhibited a selectively reduced transmigration in wild-type animals. On I/R or stimulation with recombinant uPA, >90% of firmly adherent leukocytes colocalized with CD31-immunoreactive endothelial junctions as detected by in vivo fluorescence microscopy. In a model of hepatic I/R, treatment with WX-340 significantly attenuated postischemic neutrophil infiltration and tissue injury. Conclusions: Our data suggest that endothelial uPA promotes intravascular adherence, whereas leukocyte uPA facilitates the subsequent paracellular transmigration of neutrophils during I/R. This process is regulated via CD11b/Mac-1, and does not require uPAR. Pharmacological blockade of uPA interferes with these events and effectively attenuates postischemic tissue injury

Fictionalising music / musicalising fiction: the integrative function of music in Richard Powers' The Time of Our Singing

Twentieth-century scholars tended to describe music either in constructivist terms, as a culturally produced system of signs without real effects, or in essentialist terms, as a universal force detached from sociocultural contexts. Recently, however, the field of sound studies has raised new awareness of the fact that music is, at its core, sound. It is thus both culturally constructed and ineluctably material. Given this shift in the scholarly conception of music, a reassessment of its functions is needed. Starting from the notion that music is a complex system of cultural meanings and concrete sounds, this article investigates its integrative function, that is, the notion that music is able to connect individuals from diverse backgrounds and to integrate them into a community. Richard Powers’ novel The Time of Our Singing (2003) provides a valuable platform for reassessing the integrative function of music, as it unfolds it on two different levels at the same time. On its narrative level the novel insists on the long-term failure of music in uniting people from different racial backgrounds. Yet, by being also a piece of musicalised fiction and, hence, musical itself, the novel tests this function on its aesthetic level as well. It thus shows that, while failing to integrate socially divided people in the long run, in its aesthetic experience, at least, music is able to bring them together for as long as the performance lasts

Writing Anthropologists, Sounding Primitives

Writing Anthropologists, Sounding Primitives re-examines the poetry and scholarship of three of the foremost figures in the twentieth-century history of U.S.-American anthropology: Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict. While they are widely renowned for their contributions to Franz Boas’s early twentieth-century school of cultural relativism, what is far less known is their shared interest in probing the representational potential of different media and forms of writing. This dimension of their work is manifest in Sapir’s critical writing on music and literature and Mead’s groundbreaking work with photography and film. Sapir, Mead, and Benedict together also wrote more than one thousand poems, which in turn negotiate their own media status and rivalry with other forms of representation. A. Elisabeth Reichel presents the first sustained study of the published and unpublished poetry of Sapir, Mead, and Benedict, charting this largely unexplored body of work and relevant selections of the writers’ scholarship. In addition to its expansion of early twentieth-century literary canons, Writing Anthropologists, Sounding Primitives contributes to current debates about the relations between different media, sign systems, and modes of sense perception in literature and other media. Reichel offers a unique contribution to the history of anthropology by synthesizing and applying insights from the history of writing, sound studies, and intermediality studies to poetry and scholarship produced by noted early twentieth-century U.S.-American cultural anthropologists. Access the OA edition here

Posthuman Economies: Introduction

Editorial for Volume 2 Issue 1 - Special Issue