THE PLEASURE IN A WHISPER. SOUND AFFECTIONS OF THE BODY

Abstract

In this paper I propose an anthropological framework for the analysis of sociocultural bounds between pleasure and whispering. To do so, I focus on the cultural practice of listening to online videos called ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) as an assisted sensibility that aims to elicit pleasurable sensations through whispering and other light sounds. Although the pleasure in whispering refers to an individual experience, the attention to different sensory and sensual practices based on whispering reveals the implications of sonorities in contemporary cultural sensorium, their technological mediations and how they modulate identities, relationships and politics. The phenomenological, sensorial and vocal analysis of social practices through this sonority gives us an account of pleasure as a sensorial disposition where intimacy and memory manifest themselves as sonorous affects and situated vibratory processes.