Dylan Bradbury (UoM): "Sounds that tell a world": Mapuzugun, orality and auditory regimes in Argentina
| Dates: | 14 May 2025 |
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| Times: | 17:00 - 17:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| Speaker: | Dylan Diego Bradbury |
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This talk is part of the seminar series of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Wed 14 May 2025, 5pm (UK time). This event will be in person, in Samuel Alexander Building, room A214. It can be followed online here: https://zoom.us/j/95860231166
Abstract: In this talk I draw from my doctoral research to explore how Mapuzugun, the Mapuche language, has been transformed by its recording and mediation in various formats, and the consequences such transformations have had for language revitalisation and Mapuche identity in Argentina. Of particular interest is the persistent conceptualisation of Mapuzugun in relation to 'orality'—a notion that both denotes the centrality of vocal performance within Mapuche culture and gestures towards the language's lack of orthographic scripture prior to European contact. Authors such as Julio Ramos (1989) have discussed orality in Latin America as emerging in relation to the written inscription of Indigenous and local vernacular voices from the colonial period onwards, while Ana María Ochoa (2017) frames such practices of inscription in terms of competing auditory regimes—that is, value systems that establish who and what can listen and be listened to, as part of a wider cosmopolitics of knowledge and life. Along these lines, I examine how Mapuzugun's orality is (re)produced in relation to practices of listening to, recording and otherwise dealing with the language as sound, particularly through its mediation in historical scientific documents, ethnographic recordings, contemporary educational materials and artistic uses of the language amidst wider revitalisation efforts.
Dylan Diego Bradbury is an ESRC-funded PhD candidate in Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester.
Speaker
Dylan Diego Bradbury
Role: Postgraduate Researcher
Organisation: The University of Manchester
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
A214
Samuel Alexander Building
Manchester
