ABSTRACT
Sound studies destabilizes a whole array of conceptual models that underpin cultural theory in its dominant forms. Studies of sonic affect provide empirical evidence of the fragility of those binaries. The body is as much a filtering mediator of meanings as is culture. Indeed, the very concept of ‘mediation’ can no longer be taken as a given. Emerging theories of extended mind and gestural cognition are reintegrating linkages between inner and outer, between thought, the body and the material world that had been severed by Cartesian dualism. Cultural theory in anglophone academia emerged from the growing recognition of the ideologies underpinning scholarly ‘objectivity.’ Cultural theory, when positing the cultural construction of so many aspects of identity and its relationships with society, has generally written the body out of its discourses. Approaches to cognition similar to Extended Mind Theory are distributed cognition and cognitive ecology.
