| Title |
The resounding body : epistemologies of sound, healing, and complementary and alternative medicine on Canada's West Coast |
| Creator |
Caballero, Rodrigo
|
| Publisher |
University of British Columbia |
| Date Created |
2014-04-14 |
| Date Issued |
2014-04-14 |
| Date |
2013 |
| Description |
The
main claim of this dissertation is that practices of sound healing are
driven by a skepticism towards how conventional medicine conceptualizes
and treats the body. Therefore, sound healing in thought and practice
may be seen as revolving around an implicit desire to redefine the body,
health, and listening. I refer to this as “negating the biomedical
body” and show how it is underscored by frequent recourse to medical
concepts adopted from complementary and alternative medicine.
This dissertation illustrates how practitioners’ negating of the
biomedical body as well as their deeply embodied conception of listening
and sound bear surprising consistency across a variety of sound healing
practices. In this sense, sound healing is caught up in changing values
regarding health, medicine, and healthcare delivery in the contemporary
west. Notwithstanding its antithetical stance, however, sound healing
can also be further understood when its dialectical relation to science
and medicine is considered. In practice this unstable and problematic
relationship is most pronounced in the contradiction between
practitioners’ negating of the biomedical body (rooted in embodiment and
indeterminacy) and popular appeals to science (rooted in representation
and objectification).
Ultimately, I argue that in lieu of recognition from established
medicine, a distinguishing role for sound healing rests on resolving
this dialectical tension. This it accomplishes through the formulation
of a new vernacular— hinging on terms such as “vibration,” “frequency,”
and “resonance”—and a privileging of the body’s immaterial and energetic
dimensions (a process I term the “naturalization of energy”). I suggest
that one outcome of this dialectic is the new “body-as-vibration,” a
conceptual model of the body that is believed to be amenable to science
but that still preserves sound healers’ need to formulate a new
epistemology for the body and health. |
| Genre |
Thesis/Dissertation
|
| Type |
Text
|
| Language |
Eng |
| Collection |
Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) 2008+
|
| Date Available |
2014-04-14 |
| Rights |
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada |
| DOI |
10.14288/1.0167297 |
| Degree |
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
|
| Program |
Ethnomusicology
|
| Affiliation |
Arts, Faculty of
|
| Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia |
| Graduation Date |
2014-05 |
| Campus |
UBCV
|
| Scholarly Level |
Graduate |
| Rights URI |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/ |
| URI |
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/46415 |
| Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace |
| Digital Resource Original Record |
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/24/items/1.0167297/source |
