Genres of Listening

“Genres of Listening is a pathbreaking, subtly heard and argued, and deeply thought-provoking ethnography of listening. This is a highly innovative and revelatory account of the distinctive nexus of communicative practice, intersubjectivity, and popular psychoanalysis in Buenos Aires. More broadly, it models—with insight and energy—compelling strategies for bringing active listening into more explicit ethnographic exploration. We will never hear the world quite the same way again.” - Don Brenneis, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz

“Genres of Listening is an important work that injects new energy into psychoanalytic theory as it intersects with anthropology and the humanistic social sciences. An original and highly innovative contribution, this book is powerful and elegant in its analysis of the fundamental formula, ‘When you say X, I hear Y.’ It is essential reading for anyone interested in the intersection of language, affect, and culture, as well as for practicing psychoanalysts.” - Greg Urban, Arthur Hobson Quinn Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania

"Marsilli-Vargas’s book is an exemplary ethnography, weaving together rich empirical materials with a deeply contextualised case-study to develop novel theoretical insights on a topic of central concern to Sound Studies. . . . Marsilli-Vargas develops important conceptual tools for a nuanced understanding of listening while making a significant contribution to fields such cultural history, Latin American Studies, and the anthropology of sound." - Chris Batterman Cháirez, Sound Studies

“Genres of Listening provide us with a wealth of imaginative and acoustic landscapes that will undoubtedly broaden our understanding of the ways in which psychoanalytical knowledge circulates between the North and the South and it is transformed by this process.” - Marcos Azevedo, Sociology of Health & Illness

“Genres of Listening is a monumental addition to linguistic and anthropological understanding of listening that fulfills each of its promises.” - Jeremy A. Rud, Linguistic Anthropology

“The book helps us to understand this culture as an urban phenomenon and to study it along with coexisting discourses and cultures of self-care that live beyond the capital of Argentina. . . . Genres of Listening will provide the readers with a deep understanding of the undergoing transformations in Argentina’s more intimate relationships.”
  - Kristin E. Yarris, Bulletin of Latin American Research

“Genres of Listening is a valuable study, a very important first step that will be useful for those who research and teach in postgraduate courses about the Argentine middle classes and their ways of thinking and acting.” - Sergio E. Visacovsky, American Ethnologist

"All in all, this book produces a perceptive conception of a key aspect in the constitution of a culture while developing a theory that fills a blind spot in the literature through its unique attention to communication beyond words."

  - Gil Hizi, Anthropological Quarterly

"Xochtil Marsilli-Vargas’s Genres of Listening innovates a scholarly tradition on the generic working of language by proposing that not only speech, but also listening, is shaped, constrained, and afforded by specific genres." - Daniel N. Silva, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology

"[Marsilli-Vargas's] meticulous descriptions of 'everyday psychoanalysis' in Argentina . . . makes the book a worthwhile read." - Victor Stout, Exertions