Josh Trichilo

Josh Trichilo is a doctoral student at York University whose theoretical interests include: culture studies, critical media studies, sound studies, auditory culture, posthumanism, and systems theory. His dissertation is on post-3.11 (The Eastern Tohoku March 11 Triple Disaster) and auditory culture among individuals, groups, and institutions. He conducts fieldwork and interviews as well as analyzes text, sound art, soundscape archives, and experimental music to unpack the experiences of 3.11 victims and the socio-political precarities of post-3.11 life. Through this analytical work, he mounts a theory of "vibrant victimhood" against what he has witnesses to be the negative e"ects of notions of trauma that inform both state and international actions and discourses that essentialize and re-traumatize local Tohoku peoples. For example, he explores the way material-social notions of "safety, globality, locality, radioactivity, sickness, healthiness, and ecology" have all been changed by 3.11 and "tested" on and through the disaster victims. The material he analyzes provide alternative historical accounts of lived experiences that add complexity and di"erence to these notions. The role of vibration and sound are often ignored, crucial forms of sociality and embodiment that are not inconsequential to these rearticulations.