“The aporia of the veil: the influence of Walter Benjamin’s aura in contemporary sound studies”

ABSTRACT

Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility” has recently shaped discussions in sound studies. However, the main theoretical apparatus of the Artwork essay, the aura, lacks sustained attention in sound studies scholarship. While sound studies scholars use analogy to refocus the essay towards sonic reproducibility, they have heretofore missed an important opportunity to analyse Benjamin’s framework for the aura. Reading the etymology of “aura” is a sonic concept at its very foundation shows how it. However, a sonic aura should not be taken as an ending point of this essay, because the auratic structure itself is problematic for sound studies scholars. Pierre Schaeffer’s influential study of the sound object uses a similar framework characterised by the acousmatic. In this framework, Schaeffer claims that the acousmatic veil disconnects sight from sound, producing what he calls the “sound object” (l’objet sonore). Schaeffer argues for both a transcendent and immanent logic of the veil. Transcendence and immanence cannot both underpin experience at the same time and are two philosophically incompatible concepts.

KEYWORDS:

• Aura
• acousmatic
• Walter Benjamin
• Pierre Schaeffer
• sound object

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The revision and publication of the Artwork essay is far too complex to outline in this paper, but I will note that the essay Benjamin felt was the most complete and representative of his ideas was first published in French (see Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings Volume 3, 1935–1938, page 122). He translated the original from German into French but kept the “aura” as a stable term throughout each version of the essay. The term is used in the same way in German, French, and English versions of the essay.

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Lisa Chinn

Lisa Chinn earned her Ph.D. from Emory University and currently serves as Resident Assistant Professor at Creighton University. She writes on poetry, sound studies, and print culture and teaches classes on the relationship between media and print.