A sonic theory unsuitable for human consumption

The past decade has seen the proliferation of scholarly work on audio culture by philosophers, sociologists, ethnographers, musicologists, anthropologists, and others. There is now a range of histories and ethnographies on listening and on the soundscape, and a proliferation of epistemological, methodological, and cultural investigations of the sonic. At the same time, as John Kieffer notes, sound art is fast becoming “the new kid on the cultural block” (2010). Different writers have engineered different conceptual approaches for studying the sonic. These voices are symptomatic of a body of work that has developed as a way of reacting against the primacy of Cartesian reason, looking for ways of escaping the Western tendency to measure, calculate and represent everything. They offer strategies for defending and resurrecting the nullified senses, like hearing, which must no longer surrender to the tyranny of ocularcentrism. However, the belated recognition of sound as a valid academic object of study and art discipline, often risks fetishizing the sonic and repeating the same ideological separations between sound and image, body and mind. Moreover, refreshing as they may be, they are too often confined within a human-centred position and interested in predominantly addressing the phenomenal experience of sound. This article wishes to discuss alternative schemas daring to go beyond the audiophile anthropocentric angle. It mainly draws on Kodwo Eshun’s unconventional method of ‘sonic fiction’ (1998), in order to argue for the value of developing a sound theory that brings together speculative philosophy, science fiction, and experimental audio art. Ultimately, it attempts to explore how such ‘a sonic intervention into thought’ (Goodman, 2010) can drag us away from the sociopolitical and historical organisation of sound and toward the vicinity of a more ‘unreal state’, where the boundaries between fiction and theory are provisional and utterly permeable

Organizational Studies in Space: Stanislaw Lem and the Writing of Social Science Fiction

This paper seeks to introduce the oeuvre of the Polish science fiction author, Stanislaw Lem, whose work is argued to carry significance for students of organizational conduct. Singling out his most famous novel, Solaris, for particular attention, a critical interpretation is offered that selectively highlights Lem's epistemological and ontological pre-occupations concerning scientific inquiry and the human condition. These concerns are seen to resonate with contemporary issues in the field of organization studies. In particular, the rhetorical role of mimesis, viewed as a synthesis of rational and non-rational human motives, within Solaris is taken to inform a wide range of human conduct. The paper concludes by calling for a realist mode of organizational discourse that explores the dialectical relationship between what it characterizes as 'solar' and 'lunar' dimensions of human behaviour. A new challenge to organization studies will be not simply to learn from the substantive concerns of literary genres such as science fiction, but also to aspire after the narrative skills of their leading exponents

Ficção científica, percepção e ontologia: e se o mundo não passasse de algo simulado? Science fiction, perception, and ontology: is the world fake?

O artigo trata de uma temática que gerou diversos filmes desde o final da década de 1990: a noção de que o mundo onde se moviam as personagens, bem como eventualmente as personagens mesmas, revelavam ser uma simulação. Tal temática foi grandemente influenciada pelos avanços da informática no domínio da assim chamada 'realidade virtual' e cumpriu funções narrativas variadas. Em especial, abriu-se em certos casos para interrogações típicas da ontologia e/ou da metafísica, relativas à realidade ou irrealidade do mundo exterior, e serviu para explorar uma temática de grande presença na ficção científica desde o surgimento da tendência cyberpunk em 1982: a dos poderes corruptores e manipuladores que interferem com a liberdade e a iniciativa dos indivíduos.<br>The article explores a topic that inspired a number of movies in the late 1990s: characters who are eventually found to live in a fake world and even to be fake themselves. Heavily influenced by advances in the computer field of so-called virtual reality, the topic has played different narrative roles. In particular, the films in some cases allow us to raise ontological or metaphysical questions about the reality or unreality of our external world, and have delved into a subject quite common in science fiction ever since the 1982 appearance of the cyberpunk trend: corruptive, manipulative powers that interfere with individual freedom and initiative