Whose Larynx Is It? Fields of Scholarly Competence around 1900

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, German philosophers such as Wilhelm Dilthey began to build epistemological foundations for the divergent epistemic interests of the humanities and the natural sciences. At the same time, controversy arose around new fields of research, such as “experimental aesthetics,” that might be affiliated with either area. This article focuses on this controversy in German academia by tracing how the larynx of singers, actors, concertgoers, readers, and theater audiences became a crucial object of investigation in experimental aesthetics—bringing together disciplines as varied as physiology, psychology, laryngology, phonetics, sound engineering, musicology, literary studies, and theater studies. The article considers why experimental aesthetics achieved such success between approximately 1890 and 1930, why it later disappeared from the academic landscape, and why it has returned in the last decade under the name “empirical aesthetics.”

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