Josh Trichilo

Josh Trichilo is a doctoral student at York University whose theoretical interests include: culture studies, critical media studies, sound studies, auditory culture, post-humanism, and systems theory. His dissertation is on post-3.11 (The Eastern Tohoku triple disaster that took place in 11 March 2011) life 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 witnessed to be the negative effects 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 ways that 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 that he analyzes provides alternative historical accounts of lived experiences that add complexity and difference to these notions. The role of vibration and sound are often ignored but are crucial forms of sociality and embodiment that are not inconsequential to these rearticulations.