ABSTRACT

In this essay, I employ a Spinozist concept of affect to explain accounts of musical feeling in a jail music programme. Residents of the jail regularly described two affectively opposed ‘atmospheres’ in the institution, which I term carceral and liberatory atmospheres. I argue that atmospheres emerge from affective fields, conditioned by the probability space of a situation. The capacity (or incapacity) to act, affect and be affected (Spinoza’s affectus) is dependent upon what is probable for people, as members of particular social groups, in a situation. I describe how carceral and liberatory atmospheres emerge from the interaction of sonic and affective fields in the jail. Following Spinoza’s Ethics, I argue that these atmospheres are ethically opposed, implying alternate ontologies of the human. In carceral atmospheres prisoners are objectified as static things whose behaviour jail administrators seek to control and determine; in liberatory atmospheres prisoners imagine themselves as open-ended processes infused with potential. Liberatory atmospheres were marked by a comparatively open probability space in which the unexpected might happen and new possibilities might emerge. For many of the jail’s residents, it was in music that choice could be exercised and the new could emerge.

摘要

在本文中，我采用Spinozist情感概念来解释监狱音乐节目中的音乐感受。监狱的居民在该机构，这是我经常一词描述了两种情感上反对“大气”监狱和解放的气氛。我认为气氛是由情感领域产生的，它取决于情况的概率空间。行动，影响和受到影响的能力（或丧失能力）（斯皮诺萨的感情））取决于在特定情况下作为特定社会群体成员的人们可能会遇到的情况。我描述了监狱中的声音和情感场如何相互作用，从而产生了监狱和自由的气氛。遵循斯宾诺莎的道德规范，我认为这些气氛在伦理上是对立的，暗示着人类的替代本体。在监狱环境中，囚犯被视为静态事物，监狱管理人员力求控制和确定其行为。在解放的气氛中，囚犯们将自己想象成充满潜力的开放式过程。自由气氛的特点是相对开放的概率空间，在该空间中可能发生意外情况，并可能出现新的可能性。对于许多监狱的居民来说，音乐是可以行使选择权的，新的可能会出现。