The Skin of Sound: Body Politics and Acoustic Science in Brazil in the 1920s–1930s

Abstract

This article analyzes two events related to the so-called science of sound, as well as their connection with the political struggles permeating Brazilian society in the 1920s and 1930s. Taken as symptoms of their time, the experiment in the field of acoustic physics conducted by the American researcher Dayton C. Miller and its repercussions in Brazil, along with the work of João Lellis Cardoso, presented at the 1937 Congress on the National Sung Language, are considered here as pretexts to discuss the country’s auditory imaginary at the time and its transversal dimension, articulating diverse views of science, bodies, and nation.