Distressing Language: Disability and the Poetics of Error
The role of disability and deafness in art

Distressing Language is full of mistakes—errors of hearing, speaking, writing, and understanding. Michael Davidson engages the role of disability and deafness in contemporary aesthetics, exploring how physical and intellectual differences challenge our understanding of art and poetry.

Where hearing and speaking are considered normative conditions of the human, what happens when words are misheard and misspoken? How have writers and artists, both disabled and non-disabled, used error as generative elements in contesting the presumed value of “sounding good”? Distressing Language grows out of the author’s experience of hearing loss in which misunderstandings have become a daily occurrence. Davidson maintains that verbal confusions are less an aberration in understanding than a component of new knowledge.

Davidson discusses a range of sites, from captioning errors and Bad Lip Reads on YouTube, to the deaf artist Christine Sun Kim’s audiovisual installations, and a poetic reinterpretation of the Biblical Shibboleth responding to the atrocities of the Holocaust. Deafness becomes a guide in each chapter of Distressing Language, giving us a closer look at a range of artistic mediums and how artists are working with the axiom of “error” to produce novel subjecthoods and possibilities.

1140360088
Distressing Language: Disability and the Poetics of Error
The role of disability and deafness in art

Distressing Language is full of mistakes—errors of hearing, speaking, writing, and understanding. Michael Davidson engages the role of disability and deafness in contemporary aesthetics, exploring how physical and intellectual differences challenge our understanding of art and poetry.

Where hearing and speaking are considered normative conditions of the human, what happens when words are misheard and misspoken? How have writers and artists, both disabled and non-disabled, used error as generative elements in contesting the presumed value of “sounding good”? Distressing Language grows out of the author’s experience of hearing loss in which misunderstandings have become a daily occurrence. Davidson maintains that verbal confusions are less an aberration in understanding than a component of new knowledge.

Davidson discusses a range of sites, from captioning errors and Bad Lip Reads on YouTube, to the deaf artist Christine Sun Kim’s audiovisual installations, and a poetic reinterpretation of the Biblical Shibboleth responding to the atrocities of the Holocaust. Deafness becomes a guide in each chapter of Distressing Language, giving us a closer look at a range of artistic mediums and how artists are working with the axiom of “error” to produce novel subjecthoods and possibilities.

32.0 In Stock
Distressing Language: Disability and the Poetics of Error

Distressing Language: Disability and the Poetics of Error

by Michael Davidson
Distressing Language: Disability and the Poetics of Error

Distressing Language: Disability and the Poetics of Error

by Michael Davidson

Paperback

$32.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    In stock. Ships in 2-4 days.
  • PICK UP IN STORE

    Your local store may have stock of this item.

Related collections and offers


Overview

The role of disability and deafness in art

Distressing Language is full of mistakes—errors of hearing, speaking, writing, and understanding. Michael Davidson engages the role of disability and deafness in contemporary aesthetics, exploring how physical and intellectual differences challenge our understanding of art and poetry.

Where hearing and speaking are considered normative conditions of the human, what happens when words are misheard and misspoken? How have writers and artists, both disabled and non-disabled, used error as generative elements in contesting the presumed value of “sounding good”? Distressing Language grows out of the author’s experience of hearing loss in which misunderstandings have become a daily occurrence. Davidson maintains that verbal confusions are less an aberration in understanding than a component of new knowledge.

Davidson discusses a range of sites, from captioning errors and Bad Lip Reads on YouTube, to the deaf artist Christine Sun Kim’s audiovisual installations, and a poetic reinterpretation of the Biblical Shibboleth responding to the atrocities of the Holocaust. Deafness becomes a guide in each chapter of Distressing Language, giving us a closer look at a range of artistic mediums and how artists are working with the axiom of “error” to produce novel subjecthoods and possibilities.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781479813841
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication date: 04/19/2022
Series: Crip
Pages: 248
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Michael Davidson is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. His most recent books include Concerto for the Left Hand: Disability and the Defamiliar Body and Invalid Modernism: Disability and the Missing Body of the Aesthetic.

Table of Contents

List of Figures xi

Introduction: Distressing Language 1

1 Poetics of Mishearing 29

2 Siting Sound: Redistributing the Senses in Christine Sun Kim 51

3 Misspeaking Poetics 72

4 "Tongue-tied and / muscle / bound": Doing Time with Eigner 98

5 Diverting Language: Jena Osman's Corporate Subject 117

6 Missing Music: The Theft of Sound in Alison O'Daniel's The Tuba Thieves 133

7 A Captioned Life 157

Afterword: Redressing Language 183

Acknowledgments 189

Notes 193

Works Cited 207

Index 219

Author the Author 231

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews