Zorn, Magdalena: This is not Music

Sound as world-making, music as metaphor: a critical inquiry into acoustheology, resonance, and the late-modern desire to hear the world as unity. Why has sound become one of the dominant metaphors of late modernity? From ASMR and data sonification to ecological theory and social philosophy, music and auditory perception increasingly promise connection, immersion, and meaning. In This is not music, Magdalena Zorn traces this acoustic turn through the concept of acoustheology: a mode of thinking in which sound becomes a substitute for theology, grounding worldviews, ethics, and social imaginaries. Drawing on music history, sound studies, philosophy, and media theory, this book examines how composers, theorists, and artists since the mid-twentieth century have expanded music into a boundless explanatory model-often at the cost of critique, distance, and difference. Zorn challenges the widespread celebration of resonance, vibration, and sonic connectedness, revealing their political, epistemological, and affective implications. What appears as intimacy and togetherness, she argues, may also produce conformity, obedience, and exclusion. This is not music is a rigorous intervention into contemporary debates on sound, ecology, and culture-insisting on reflection where immersion promises comfort.