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Ghostly resonance : sound, memory and matter in Las olas and Dies d'agost
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Whittaker, Thomas (2014) Ghostly resonance : sound, memory and matter in Las olas and Dies d'agost. Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 15 (3). pp. 323-336. doi:10.1080/14636204.2014.972097
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14636204.2014.972097
Abstract
The recent Spanish films Las olas (Alberto Morais, 2011) and Dies d'agost (Marc Recha, 2006) are haunted by sound. Of the recent flurry of films to turn on the theme of historical memory, Las olas and Dies d'agost stand out as distinctive in their particular sensitivity to sound design, and their shared concern with the act of listening. As this article shows, the films explore the relationship between sound and memory: like sound, memory is evanescent and unstable, fading through time. As such, the films do not so much contribute towards the recuperation of historical memory as revealed by its very limitations. By drawing upon Derrida's Specters of Marx through the disciplines of sound studies, archaeology and human geography, this article hopes to demonstrate how sound can have a significant spectral presence in films. Sound, it argues, serves to disrupt and unsettle the temporality of the films, revealing a time that is “out of joint” with its past, present and future. Spectral sounds not only challenge the narrativisation of historical memory, but also undermine the materiality of the image, casting doubt on the stability and certainty of both time and matter. Both absent and present, material and immaterial, haunted sounds powerfully articulate unspeakable memories of the recent past, whose horrors and residual echoes ultimately resist the discourse of recuperation.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 1463-6204 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 2014 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 15 | ||||||||
| Number: | 3 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 323-336 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1080/14636204.2014.972097 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
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