Channeling Alterity: Toward a Theory of Shamanic Audiovisualization

Abstract

This article theorizes the concept of ‘shamanic audiovisualization’ – a process whereby the cinematic apparatus itself functions as a ritualistic medium channeling alterity – to challenge logocentric models of testimony and trauma that dominate the archive. Moving beyond the imperative to ‘give voice’, which risks re-performing the violence of the event, I examine how Korean screen media offers an alternative ethical framework. Through an analysis of the Korean film Spirits’ Homecoming , directed by Cho Jung-rae in 2016, I argue that the cinematic medium functions as a shamanic conduit. This process, inherently gendered and coded feminine, facilitates a mode of ‘channeling’ alterity that operates through receptivity rather than extraction. Shamanic audiovisualization thus proposes a new social temporality for trauma – one that acknowledges the past without being entrapped by it – and models a politics of emotion that moves beyond wound-based identity toward a future-oriented embrace.