Sterne - Diminished Faculties: Virtual Book Talk
IKK’s "Art & Health" research cluster is pleased to invite you to its inaugural virtual public book talk by Jonathan Sterne on his latest book Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment (DUP 2022) via Zoom
Abstract
In Diminished Faculties Jonathan Sterne offers a sweeping cultural study and theorization of impairment. Drawing on his personal history with thyroid cancer and a paralyzed vocal cord, Sterne undertakes a political phenomenology of impairment in which experience is understood from the standpoint of a subject that is not fully able to account for itself. He conceives of impairment as a fundamental dimension of human experience, examining it as both political and physical. While some impairments are enshrined as normal in international standards, others are treated as causes or effects of illness or disability. Alongside his fractured account of experience, Sterne provides a tour of alternative vocal technologies and practices; a study of “normal” hearing loss as a cultural practice rather than a medical problem; and an intertwined history and phenomenology of fatigue that follows the concept as it careens from people to materials science to industrial management to spoons. Sterne demonstrates how impairment is a problem, opportunity, and occasion for approaching larger questions about disability, subjectivity, power, technology, and experience in new ways. Diminished Faculties ends with a practical user’s guide to impairment theory.
Bio
Jonathan Sterne teaches in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University where he holds the position of James McGill Professor of Culture & Technology. He is author of Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment (Duke 2021); MP3: The Meaning of a Format (Duke 2012), The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Duke 2003); and numerous articles on media, technologies and the politics of culture. He is also editor of The Sound Studies Reader (Routledge 2012) and co-editor of The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age (Minnesota 2016). He is working on a series of essays on artificial intelligence and culture, and with Mara Mills, he is writing Tuning Time: Histories of Sound and Speed. Visit his website. Visit his institutional faculty page.