[Linganth] Jonathan Sterne on his book, Diminished Faculties

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues,
CaMP Anthropology features Jonathan Sterne today, who answers Toni
Nieminen's questions about his new book, Diminished Faculties: A Political
Phenomenology.

https://campanthropology.org

Best,
Ilana

Press blurb: In *Diminished Faculties* Jonathan Sterne offers a sweeping
cultural study and theorization of impairment. Drawing on his personal
history with thyroid cancer and a paralyzed vocal cord, Sterne undertakes a
political phenomenology of impairment in which experience is understood
from the standpoint of a subject that is not fully able to account for
itself. He conceives of impairment as a fundamental dimension of human
experience, examining it as both political and physical. While some
impairments are enshrined as normal in international standards, others are
treated as causes or effects of illness or disability. Alongside his
fractured account of experience, Sterne provides a tour of alternative
vocal technologies and practices; a study of “normal” hearing loss as a
cultural practice rather than a medical problem; and an intertwined history
and phenomenology of fatigue that follows the concept as it careens from
people to materials science to industrial management to spoons. Sterne
demonstrates how impairment is a problem, opportunity, and occasion for
approaching larger questions about disability, subjectivity, power,
technology, and experience in new ways. *Diminished Faculties* ends with a
practical user’s guide to impairment theory.
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