Sexed Bodies/(Im)Possible Bodies/Polyphonic Bodies

Abstract

Abstract This chapter highlights the importance of attention to musical, sonic, aesthetic, and affective cultural production in the phenomenological theorization of an always complex, multiple subjectivity. Focusing on the digital and live performances of Russian popular music superstar Valeriia—including her appearances in Estonia—and exploring the role of a corporeality that is in part sexed (as opposed to gendered), the chapter reveals that lived experience is a constant interplay between materiality and the productive possibilities suggested by phenomenological “horizons.” It is ultimately argued that foregrounding the sensual and somatic aspects of experience, and the sonic rather than the visual (via the concepts of the “catalytic aide mémoire” and “polyphonic embodiment”), contributes to a more nuanced understanding of multifaceted, capacious human-environment interaction. Such a theorization can encompass the limitless components (including material, geo-/socio-cultural, and ideological) that contribute to the subject’s being and becoming, a process of perpetual formations and re-formations.