Stratum and Shade: Archaeology and Phenomenology of Listening

Abstract

This article interrogates the act of listening from a philosophical view based on two complementary approaches: first, an archeology of listening, that poses the sound object, the listening-object, as a product of a mechanism of mediation and inscription conformed by layers and strata, whose outline or footprint would reveal the Listening Device from which it emerges. Secondly, from a phenomenology of listening, we explore the Husserlian notion of Abschattung (shading, shadowing, adumbration), which would put us in a position to observe the moment of conformation of the sound object on a time horizon and the way in which the aural sediments could be stratified to configure a listening subject.