Abstract
Human attention to various sounds is selective. We pay attention to some sounds—but not others. We create some sounds—and avoid making others. How have we got to such acts of silence-breaking and—on to enjoyment of various sound patterns as we produce them? How would a sound—a neutral event—becomes affectively valued—between the designations of noise and music? How would some sounds from the environment—birdsongs—become felt as enjoyable, while others—police sirens—make us apprehensive? In this chapter, an analysis of voices within the Self is given.
We can posit a process that involves a sequence of ongoing experiencing: RUPTURE→ AFFECTIVE GENERALIZATION→DISTANCING→IMAGINATION (past and future) → NEW EXPERIENCE. The world of sounds—perceived and produced, signified and adored, rejected, and suppressed—is a particularly potent realm for the dramatic life worlds of all human beings in any corner of the world. Music is not merely a background for our ordinary activities, but an arena where we create our own selves, not even noticing this basic process I’m going on.
Carl Gustav Carus Allegory of Music
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Bells – big and small.. have one joint feature.. they make sounds. Aside from large church bells one finds small bells as amulets—to protect against evil eye. Specific number of bells was attached to Russian horse harnesses Ryan, 1999, p 240)
- 3.
Ehrenfels introduced the notion of Gestalt quality in 1890 (Ehrenfels, 1890/1988a in German, 1988b in English version). He was eminently prepared for this—being a musician himself (follower of Richard Wagner and studied with Anton Bruckner) as well as a composer, he also was a philosopher of highest order (student of Franz Brentano and Alexius Meinong) he set the stage for both Gestalt and Ganzheitspsychologie traditions in the German language room (Diriwächter & Valsiner, 2008).
- 4.
In the words of Ehrenfels: “Psychic combinations never repeat themselves with complete exactness. Every temporal instant of the every one of the numberless unities of consciousness therefore possesses its own peculiar quality, its individuality, which sinks, unrepeatable and irreplaceable, into the bosom of the past, while at the same time the new creations of the present step in to take its place” (Ehrenfels, 1988a/1890, p. 116).
- 5.
For listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl-yzeqpJOw
- 6.
Barbara Strozzi was the daughter of the Florentian-Venetian opera librettist Giulio Strozzi who since her childhood prepared her for singing and composing. Her life course as an independent woman has been well documented (Glixon, 1997, 1999; Rosand, 1978) as a key figure in the intellectual group of the highest literati of the Venetian society.
- 7.
This is so because the reality to which the reflexive process pertains is not yet in place—given the irreversible time in which this process unfolds.
- 8.
The history of the ideas of cultural elements turned into symbolic resources covers the first two decades of the twenty-first century and is described in Zittoun (2007, 2018). The notion of ruptures has been elaborated in Zittoun (CitationID="CR035">2006</CitationRef>)—the flow of human experiencing at times comes to the breakdown of previous structural forms and their re-constitution into new ones.
- 9.
The model was developed by Tania Zittoun with her colleagues (Zittoun, 2017; Zittoun & Cerchia, 2013; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2016a, b) in order to situate the cultural objects → symbolic objects transitions in the flow of human life course. Personal making of symbolic resources—out of the environmental possibilities many of which (but not all) are suggested as cultural resources—is the linking zone of person and society. A person participates in society by way of creating one’s own symbolic resources and using them in societal contexts.
- 10.
- 11.
Much of which is equal to creativity—see further in Zittoun & Gillespie, 2016b.
- 12.
See Zittoun, (CitationID="CR035">2006</CitationRef>), for elaboration. The focus on ruptures as centrally relevant for human lives is a major breakthrough in developmental psychology by making the nonlinear nature of development the meta-theoretical axiomatic stance.
- 13.
This approach—TEA (Trajectory Equifinality Approach)—is a direction developed since 2004 by Japanese researchers (in English—Sato, 2017; Sato et al., 2016) that considers both imaginary and real pathways in human life course in the understanding of the human psyche. The Looping Model intersects with the TEA model in concrete places in the loop (Zittoun & Valsiner, 2016, p. 13, Fig. 1.4).
- 14.
See further Valsiner (2020) on the central role of the role of sublime moments in human affective lives—human beings create for themselves “little dramatizations” that in their sublime function create the affective context for further development.
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Valsiner, J. (2021). Silent Screaming: Voices Within the Self. In: General Human Psychology. Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75851-6_4
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