The tinnital sublime

ABSTRACT

This essay proposes the sublime as a paradigmatic concept in a Western aesthetics of tinnitus. Through critical readings of canonical works on the sublime and analysis of contemporary artistic, cinematic, and audiological practices around tinnitus, I present what I call “the tinnital sublime,” an aesthetics that depicts tinnitus as a terrible sensory occlusion and disruption of the (agentive, masculine, European) self. Tinnitus can be a terribly sublime experience, but the subjectivity constructed in Burke and Kant’s aesthetics both amplifies the terror of tinnitus and denigrates tinnital subjects for feeling that terror. In contrast, recent composers have integrated tinnitus into their music, making a sometimes-uneasy peace with phantom sound. These composers dispense with Enlightenment notions that privilege a nature-conquering, sensorily unencumbered, and rationally detached self. Instead of struggling heroically against tinnitus, they present an “illegitimate sublime,” an aesthetics that honors suffering—but also attempts to elude it—by yielding to the uncontrollable nature of tinnitus. Listening to tinnitus through the sublime does poetic justice to the gravity of its ontology and phenomenology. At the same time, listening to the sublime through tinnitus dramatizes the ableism and alienation embedded in the sublime notion of ever overcoming our relationship to nature.

KEYWORDS:

• Tinnitus
• aesthetics
• sublime
• sound
• disability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I know because I hear from people with tinnitus. They usually seek dialogue or assistance and occasionally express criticism of my work.

2. Email communication to author, December 31, 2021.

3. Author interview, Glenview, Illinois, February 16, 2012.

4. Thanks to David Cecchetto for raising this point.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mack Hagood

Mack Hagood is Associate Professor of Media and Communication at Miami University, Ohio and the producer/host of the sound studies podcast Phantom Power. He is the author of Hush: Media and Sonic Self Control (Duke UP, 2019) a book about “orphic media,” apps and devices such as white noise makers and noise-canceling headphones, used to create a comfortable sense of space through sound. He has published work on tinnitus, disability media studies, the use of noise-canceling headphones in air travel, the noise of fans in NFL football stadiums, indie rock in Taiwan, and the ontology of Foley and digital film sound.