Atmospheric Knowledge: Environmentality, Latency, and Sonic Multimodality

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How do we know through atmospheres? How can being affected by an atmosphere give rise to knowledge? What role does somatic, nonverbal knowledge play in how we belong to places? Atmospheric Knowledge takes up these questions through detailed analyses of practices that generate atmospheres and in which knowledge emerges through visceral intermingling with atmospheres. From combined musicological and anthropological perspectives, Birgit Abels and Patrick Eisenlohr investigate atmospheres as a compelling alternative to better-known analytics of affect by way of performative and sonic practices across a range of ethnographic settings. With particular focus on oceanic relations and sonic affectedness, Atmospheric Knowledge centers the rich affordances of sonic connections for knowing our environments.

Birgit Abels is Professor of Cultural Musicology at the University of Göttingen. She is the author of Music Worlding in Palau: Chanting, Atmospheres, and Meaningfulness, The Harmonium in North Indian Music, and Sounds of Articulating Identity: Tradition and Transition in the Music of Palau, Micronesia.

Patrick Eisenlohr is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the research group Society and Culture in Modern India at the University of Göttingen. He is the author of Sounding Islam: Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World and Little India: Diaspora, Time, and Ethnolinguistic Belonging in Hindu Mauritius.