Sounds Senses - (Francophone Postcolonial Studies) by Yasser Elhariry (Paperback)

About the Book

Sounds Senses takes sound as a point of departure for engaging the francopphone postcolonial condition. Offering a synthetic overview of sound studies, the book dismantles the oculocentrism and retinal paradigms of francophone postcolonial studies. It introduces two primary theoretical thrusts - the unheard and the unintegrated - to the project of analyzing, extending, and rejuvenating francophone postcolonial studies.

Book Synopsis

Sounds Sensesis about what happens to the francophone postcolonial condition when sound is taken as a point of departure for engaging cultural production. Offering a synthetic overview of sound studies, it dismantles the retinal paradigms and oculocentrism of francophone postcolonial studies. By shifting the sensory hermeneutics of perception from the visual, the textual, and the graphemic to the sonic, the auditory, and the phonemic, the book places cultural production that privileges or otherwise exaggerates æstheticized sensorial experiences at the forefront of francophone postcolonialism. In the process, it introduces two primary theoretical thrusts--the unheard and the unintegrated--to the project of analyzing, extending, and rejuvenating francophone postcolonial studies. The book reevaluates francophone culture in relation to sound and the experience of sound, situating it along the fluid axes of paralingual utterance, audio-vision, voice, and narrative speakers. Through a range of case studies focusing on parafrancophonics, poetry, world music, cinema, the graphic novel, popular speech phenomenæ, and the poetics and politics of transcolonial identification, Sounds Senses demonstrates how francophone postcolonial culture is satiated with a glut of unexplored sonic significance.

Review Quotes

'The book's generous yet controlled tonal range with respect to the stated themes makes for welcome surprises such as these, as well as the necessary nods of acknowledgement from the reader concerning postcolonialisms. It succeeds in mapping critical terrain authentically and innovatively. Overall, its flow and transitions are smooth, not least as to comparative approaches.'

Aaron Prevots, Southwestern University

'In a deeply attuned set of reflections, yasser elhariry provides a ringing Introduction to this impressive collection of texts exploring "sounds and senses" that possesses the potential to resonantly reconfigure 'our sensorial and critical receptions and perceptions of francophone postcolonial cultures.'

Alison Rice, University of Notre Dame

About the Author

yasser elhariry, Associate Professor of French at Dartmouth College, is the author of Pacifist Invasions: Arabic, Translation & the Postfrancophone Lyric, and coeditor of The Postlingual Turn and Critically Mediterranean: Temporalities, Æsthetics & Deployments of a Sea in Crisis.